April's Diary
by Connie Nervegas
Summary: April writes about her daily experiences as a grown woman hanging around with four teenage ninjas. The only place where she can vent openly when they get on her nerves and about what she really thinks of them.
1. Chapter 1

April's Diary

_I've been using this as a warm up exercise the last few days, so it kind of drops off in the middle of things. I'll update as I go along._

Dear Diary,

It seems obligatory to start a diary entry with that salutation and I shall not disappoint, even though I'm hoping that nobody else will ever read this. I may have to lock it up in a safety deposit box when I'm done. If you're reading this for some reason, like if I get killed and you're all packing up my stuff, then this was the ranting of a drunken girl. Yeah, that's it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I've also decided not to add any dates. For some reason it feels safer. Ever since I met the boys I've been doing lots of those kinds of things. Where I can't explain why, but it feels a lot safer and I would never have thought of doing it before I met them. But I suppose it's worth it.

I had class this morning with Professor Wiggins. It's a 3 ¾ hour class and I'm about ready to chuck a piece of petrified wood at him while he's doing his weekly classroom performance. The man is a professional actor, or wishes he were anyway. The only reason he teaches this class is so that he can force us to watch him pause dramatically and rant and rave how he has an altar in his closet dedicated to Darwin and such nonsense.

I asked Donatello the other day if he would ever build an altar to Darwin. He liked the idea, but I think it was mainly because it he thought it creep out his brothers. He seems to be very motivated by that. Sometimes I think we're going to end up have a conversation that ends with, "Yeah, he was always so quiet and mild mannered and seemed so normal. Who would have thought that he could have done something like that?"

Speaking of awkward Don behavior, he followed me straight into the bathroom the other day. This is par for the course for him, mind you. He's only lived with his brothers and his father and so doesn't seem to get the clue that the bathroom should be off limits. This time, I was standing there in my bra and underwear. I was so shocked that I just stood there while he gave me a lecture saying that he thought I might have black mold in my bathtub and wanted to culture it and try to raise it as a pet or something. Or else that Mike had a pet and he wanted to get rid of the mold. I don't really remember. I hit him in the face with my loofa and he just raised his eyebrows, or where his eyebrows should be, and left the room. He shut the door, knocked and walked straight back in.

Raph walks in on me sometimes, but he does it strategically. Don does it because he's in too much of a brain-daze to know what he's about most of the time. Raph is usually trying to catch me literally with my pants down because in his mind he thinks I'll be more likely to say yes to weird requests. It scares me that that line of reasoning is starting to actually make sense to me now. Like if he catches me when I'm embarrassed enough, that I won't notice saying yes to really strange requests. One classic instance went something like this.

The door opens and I'm standing there, with a towel around myself. He looks and says without a trace of surprise," Oh, you're naked."

"That's right, you little pervert. Get out of here."

"Can I drive your van to Canada?"

"Canada? What's up there?" And I'm usually so curious that I forget to kick him out. So I suppose it works.

"I want to buy some fireworks."

"Can't you get them here?"

"Well, not the good stuff. Do you want me to suffer with low grade explosives?"

"Well, it's not that far to Canada. We'd have to spend at least two nights."

"Road trip!"

He left the room, probably planning a list of contraband to smuggle back before I realized that I had just told him I would drive him to Canada. I hurried out of the bathroom, still not dressed, mind you.

"Wait! No Canada! What's wrong with you? I have class tomorrow!"

I don't recall Leo walking in on me. He almost did once and then sent me a bouquet of flowers to make up for it. He's the little gentleman.

Michelangelo seems to see it as a good opportunity to case my place and take my stuff. Then he tells me that the others did it. He's such a brat sometimes. That little klepto.

I don't know how I got on to this subject. And now I must go buy Splinter a new grooming set. His hair is really coarse and he goes through them pretty quick. I've thinking about getting a pet grooming brush and taking off the tag because I think he would be insulted if he knew. But the bristles are stronger.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Well, the weekly movie night is finally over. They usually turn into weekly movie weekends unless somebody gets kidnapped on Saturday or something and then they turn into "Rescue [insert name] Weekends."

It started out the usual way with Raph jumping out at me while I'm changing my clothes so he can ask if he can invite his loan shark over. I'm starting to get really worried that he likes to actually hang out with his loan shark. Turns out he was going to buy something probably illegal from him and he didn't want to waste the energy of going to the rendezvous point. Thankfully, Leo heard him and after dragging him physically out the bedroom, while he had his eyes shut and apologizing over and over, he soundly screamed at him for being ungentlemanly, hanging out with criminals and blah blah blah. The usual stuff.

I can never predict how these episodes will go. Sometimes they end up dueling each other and breaking lots of stuff or taking off chasing each other. In the worst case I've ever seen, Raph had an emotional meltdown and cried for hours. That wasn't much of a fun night. It was like being in a parallel dimension where everything was running backwards. This time he tried to argue, but he's not good at logical argument, so he just let it go. I have a feeling that he didn't care that much about it in the first place, otherwise they would've broken some of my stuff over it.

Hanging out with ninjas isn't as fun as it sounds sometimes. Especially when they're all about 15 and have a tendency to beat each other up to resolve conflicts. I asked Splinter once if he'd like to come, but he looked put out and said it was good for them to get out of the house and spend time with me. I think he meant that it was good for him to get them out of the house sometimes so he can have time to himself.

Well, Mike made a very nice dinner, like usual. Then we had the inevitable Don-speech giving. He likes to criticize/ praise the meal; with him you never can tell and then he philosophized on the origination of the nacho and the history of corn as it was cultivated by Mesoamerican people in ancient times. I geek out with him more than I'd like to admit, so I'll just pretend that I was sitting there bored, like the other three. Well, Mike seems to only know how to break up these speeches by threatening to withhold food from Don. I've never seen him actually carry out on the threat, but I have a feeling that he has because it usually shuts Don up.

I know that Leo has some dastardly ways of shutting up Don when he thinks he's talking too much. He grinds up Benadryl and slips it into his food, knowing that he'll have to go to bed within an hour. He only does this as a last resort, when he's being unusually obnoxious or else making Raph or Mike nervous. They're both prone to acting out wildly then they get upset, so I think in Leo's mind it's a good way of keeping them both reined in. I've only seen him do it once, when Don seemed to do nothing but follow Raph around and tell him that the whiskey he'd been drinking had been strong enough to polish chrome and that he was pretty sure that if he'd drank more than one pint that it would eat through his intestines. Of course, Raph had drunk a lot by that point. Come to think of it, Don does a lot of talking for being described by the others as being shy and quiet. I think they block out about 80% of what he says and so they vastly underestimate his real output.

Then came the agonizing hour when we debated on what movie to put in first. This hour of agony usually only applies on the first movie because chances are the argumentative party will be asleep or gone or otherwise occupied by the time the next movie is put in. Usually Leo is the only one who makes it manfully to the end. Mike is the first to succumb to sleep, which is funny because he makes a big deal about the movie line up and he gets so excited. It's actually pretty cute. Then Raph looses focus and disappears for a while and then comes back when the movie's over. He doesn't seem to like anything. I'm wondering if he just challenges the movie choice to see what the others will do. And then Don tries very hard to stay awake, but never lasts. I find this inability to get through movies pretty strange, since they're all master ninjas who fly around the city all night long. They can't watch Pirates of the Caribbean all the way through.

Usually Leo lasts till the end and we have a little chat while the others sleep. He's nice to talk to. Very polite. He tends to always bring up Taoism though, and I have to force myself to pay attention to what he's saying. He also calls Don and Mike, "the little ones," which is really adorable, to me anyway. When he calls them that to their faces they tend to jump him. I have a feeling that he'd make the ultimate boyfriend. You know, if he were human and also an adult. Friday night he said that he thought he'd adopt the philosophy of legalism and model his disciplinary practices with the other three after it. I was falling asleep by this point and asked him if he meant to go to law school. He didn't answer so I think I said something stupid. It doesn't help that he has this jazz DJ voice that would relax anybody to sleep.

At about 4am on Friday night, Raph snuck back in. I only knew because I was in the bathroom and he barged in, saying that he wanted to buy a boat and that the deal ended at 6am. He wanted me to go with him with the van to hitch it up. I asked if the boat came with a trailer as I tried to hide behind the door and he said that he didn't know. Mike had woken up at the sound of our voices and also came in the bathroom and said that it might make it hard to haul a boat if it didn't have a trailer, but he was all for trying it out. I was getting kind of worried because I knew that they would try it. But then Don came in the bathroom too and said that he could make a trailer out of a box spring and my entertainment center. Leo was up by this point and I thought I was saved by his reasoning and responsibility until he stood there in the bathroom door way rubbing his eyes and saying that a boat trailer needs tires and where would they get those. I was forced into the bathtub by this point and had a grown up tempter-tantrum. I said that I didn't know where they would even put the stupid thing because they certainly weren't leaving it here. Mike said that they could park it at the end of a sewer grate by the Bay. Then I asked how they would sail this thing. Don has Googled sailing. Of course. So then I pulled out the big guns and asked if Splinter would want them sailing in front of people. They're supposed to be ninjas. This didn't have the effect that I thought it would because Leo said that they could actually use it in case of waterborne danger and such. I lost it and tried to shove Raph out of the bathroom by pushing on his chest, but it was like trying to push a brick wall and he just laughed.

Leo shook his head, like he was shaking water out of his ears and finally said that he assumed this boat was being sold by Johnny No Thumbs and it all sounded like bad business to him. He's not too good when he's been woken up and he takes a while to wind back up. Then he told them all to go to bed. They listened, except for Raph, who pulled him aside into my bedroom to have a man-to-man or a hand-to-hand or something. Don and Mike seemed to go back to sleep right away. I tried to resist as long as I could, but I eventually broke down and tried to listen to what Leo and Raph were saying in my room.

I didn't hear anything. I decided to let my curiosity be my guide and opened the door. Great. They both had fallen asleep on my bed. I had no idea where I would sleep. Looking back on it, I could have pulled out a sleeping bag and slept on the floor, but I'm suppose I'm too much of an aristocrat for that. Mike was on the couch and Don was on the floor. I considered rolling Raph and Leo off the bed, but they were both too big to kick out of bed. I knew Raph slept with his sais within arm's reach and Leo was known to blindly choke anyone who woke him up if he was in the right sleep stage, so I just stood there for about fifteen minutes, trying to figure out what to do. I grabbed a few blankets and tried to bed down in the bathtub.

Well, I don't know if any of my nonexistent readers know how it feels to sleep in a bathtub, but it isn't exactly comfortable. So I had the brilliant idea to try to sleep in the between Leo and Raph. There was some space between them and lying there really still seemed like a better option that not sleeping at all in a bed made out of porcelain, or as Don later informed me, fiberglass.

So I got in between them and congratulated myself on my idea. Then after about half an hour, I realized that it was a little claustrophobic and it wasn't like I could move either of them. And it didn't help that Leo's shell was facing me and I had this horrible idea that he would roll over onto me and kill me. So I turned to face Raph, who was facing me. I never realized what funky breath he has. I'm thankfully never this close to notice. So I tried pushing on his chest again, but I might as well have pushed on the rock of Gibraltar for all the good it did.

But I did get a few moments of amusement anyway. After a few minutes of lying there, silently cursing them for daring to sleep on my bed, I heard Leo mumbling in a high pitched voice, "Quit it, Don…" He was quiet for a minute and then he whined, "No, it's mine!" I've never heard him whine before and I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing.

I'm assuming I fell asleep after that because I had a dream about when Don answered my phone and told my mother that I was living with four men. And then Splinter married my mother and we were all on a sitcom about a typical 25-year-old woman and her wacky mutant family.

But I had a horrible awakening. I thought I heard a deep man's voice in bedroom and thought right away, "Holy shit. I'm dead." Then I opened my eyes and there was Raph. He was still asleep and mumbling, "Don't let the cat out," in this scary deep voice. His voice is really deep anyway, so it scared me out of my skin. It was light out and Leo wasn't in bed anymore.

I apologized to Leo in case finding me sandwiched between them made him uncomfortable, but he just said that it just kept him from getting kicked by Raph, so it was okay. He was making breakfast and huffing and complaining because the little ones weren't awake. He was going to go over to Mike and physically assault him in his sleep but I pictured lots of broken furniture. So I told him that I'd prefer it if he let them sleep and he usually listens to what I say. I asked him why he wasn't complaining that Raph wasn't awake yet. He didn't really answer but mumbled about Raph getting up when he wants to get up.

Well, Raph got up at that exact moment and instantly demanded food. Then he put his arm around me and asked where we would register for our wedding. I had hoped he hadn't noticed that I was in bed last night because I didn't want to take this all-day ribbing from them.

I said I'd have to marry Leo too, and asked Raph if he needed to gargle or something. Because his breath smells.

Well, it was a typical breakfast with the turtles. They wash dishes in record speed. As soon as I thought about them, they were done. They don't clean up that much, but when they do, they clean like four cleaning machines.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Dear Diary,

I've decided that my boys would be a fascinating case study even if they were human, since they only socialized with each other growing up. They have some very interesting games that they play that they must have developed during their days of isolation.

One of the most interesting is The Guitar Game. One of them bangs out a tune on a guitar. Then they pass the guitar off to somebody else, who is supposed to replicate the tune they just heard. They never get it right, but that isn't the point. They pass it off to somebody else who has to replicate the tune they just heard. Not the first tune that was played. This can go on for hours sometimes.

I think the scariest game they play is when they all go up on the roof and then take turns throwing each other off of buildings.

The building tossing may be the scariest but the thing that troubles me the most is this gallows humor that they have. Sometimes they joke about what they want the others to do with their stuff, bodies, funerals, etc. when they die. Raph goes the furthest and says that he probably won't live long enough to reach the legal drinking age, so he has to get it all in while he can. And they others laugh. They've even started including me in these death jokes, saying that I have to be sure to include certain things in their eulogies and not to worry because nobody will be there to hear it anyway. I didn't understand these death pep talks at first and used to tell them off for it, but I think I get it now. They grew up in a void and in their minds they won't leave any void when they die. They never really existed in the world and so their deaths won't cause any ripples in society. The only gap they will leave is with each other, so I suppose this could be some sort of preemptive death support group. I don't know if that is a source of comfort for guys who are in such a dangerous line of business, or if all this is really tough talk. I guess I'll never know. But for now I just laugh and play along and tell Mike that when he dies I'll make sure that Raph doesn't get any of his movies.


	3. Chapter 3

_This story is proving to be addictive._

Dear Diary,

I will never ever again let Raph take me out for any reason unless Leo is with us. Or one of the others, but preferably Leo. Having Mike along would most likely be ever worse.

I was sitting in class, wondering about why I have a fear of employment now all because my boss tried to kill me and whether or not I'll die an old woman with a quarter of my loans still outstanding, when my cell went off. I saw that it Raph's number, but quickly hung up on him in embarrassment because we're not supposed to have our phones on the in the classroom. The classic dictatorial power trip of your average adjunct. Well, I could see it vibrating about three more times within ten minutes and I started worrying that it was an emergency so I took the phone out into the hallway.

My head hurts too much to go on. I'll finish this tomorrow, if I can stand to relive it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I won't lie. I won't delude myself any longer. Raphael purposefully took me out and got me so drunk that I had no clue what was going on. It isn't hard to get me drunk at the best of times, but I learned later that I was plied with Raph's super potent 'stilled whiskey and then woke up halfway off my bed holding a traffic pylon. Raph was lying on the kitchen table. I mean really lying on it like a bed with a magazine over his face.

He had a lot of remorse later after I puked my guts dry and said that we didn't do anything _too_ bad. "Too bad" doesn't contain much matter where he's concerned, so I think we could have done anything. Actually, he would have been the offending party, while I stumbled along behind him giggling and egging him on.

The only thing he'll tell me is that we stole a meter maid truck and then we tried to get airplane tickets to fly to Cuba for some reason.

Anyway, I have a test coming up in two days and I'm going to have Don come over and tutor me.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Really, really, really hating school right now. If only Stockman hadn't tried to kill me then I would have a job and money. You know, that green stuff that I seem to be running low on now that I have four teenage boys and their elderly father to pay for. Preposition at end of sentence.

I didn't tell the others what Raph and I did, mostly because I can't really remember too clearly and it doesn't really matter now. Unless he killed somebody and I'm blocking it out.

My brain hurts. I don't want to read another syllable. Donatello seems to have no bounds to his brain and I really feel stupid compared to him. He doesn't help when he makes those statements like, "That's an easy mistake to make," or, "Yeah, laymen don't usually understand that." And he's so blasted patient. It makes me want to slap him.

He's just being nice to me and he doesn't have to at all. So I need to buckle down and buck up and go in there and write down something halfway intelligible. It all feels so meaningless in the scheme of my life though. Who cares how you spell the full word for DNA? Is that going to come in as really essential in my career? Spell check doesn't exist in the professional world of science?

* * *

Dear Diary,

My boys were here again for another movie weekend. We made it through Friday and into Saturday night with no casualties and few breakages of furniture and no breakages of bones. They decided to tell stories to each other. I love when they tell stories. They must have told stories to amuse each other before they went topside. I have this strong urge to lock them in separate rooms and do experiments on them. I think that's leftover from my days with Baxter Stockman and I'm looking to overcome it.

Anyway, they always go in their presumed birth order. They don't really know who is the oldest, so I think Splinter just declared that it went Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and then Michelangelo. I've never asked anyway.

Well, Leo starts out the stories and his usually have a ponderous moral message about something that he happens to be pissed off about at the moment. Usually the hero is studious and well-behaved and obedient and such. And then he meets some mystical being with abilities that mirror the thing he's annoyed about, like that Mike isn't waking up in the morning or Raph has just come back from a week of who-knows-what. Then the villain is something like "the demon of eternal sleep" or "the absent prince." I don't know if the others pick up on these moral messages or not and I suspect they play dumb to avoid lectures.

Raphael's stories are usually hard to follow and involve lots of references to movies he's just seen. After we watched Shrek he told a story about an ugly green guy with bad breath… I just realized the autobiographical component of that story and now feel a little bad. But anyway, he usually degrades into a line of reasoning that goes something like, "And then the witch doctor left the country…" (Wasn't he in outer space a minute ago?) "Yeah, but he got back to earth and landed back in his home country and then he left…" (How'd he get there? Didn't an alien chew off his legs?) "Well, he had a special cart made up for himself. Then he met a beautiful princess. She didn't have powers or anything. She was just really hot. And she fell in love with him…" (Why would she fall in love with a witch doctor with no legs and 50 sons? Talk about baggage.) "Well, she was really maternal see. And she… well… I'm tired of this. You're turn, Don."

Don's stories are starting to scare me. Not because he's a thrilling story teller or anything, but because I honestly don't know what is in that boy's mind. He rambles on in a nonsensical fashion, stopping to recite encyclopedia entries about whatever fact he finds interesting in the course of the story. I took notes on the last one to keep track of the quick pace of his thoughts and they looked like this:

"Once a dragon lived in Prague… Communism until 1990… Velvet Revolution… lots of goulash. The real stuff. Not the American knock off. The dragon was really a komodo dragon… ?... Horseback. Prince ran to Russia. It was middle ages and he was outrunning the black plague. B.P. has a faster horse. Dragon was his sidekick or something. Fought a five headed cat. Cats have retractable claws. Cat could smell through the top of his mouth and so could smell B.P. coming behind… who… Invented mustard gas…" I got myself more chips and asked Mike to take notes for me. His notes were even funnier because they read, "Stupid Prince can't see that Plague is symbolic of his dad. Then he duels and loses. What a pussy. Dragon? Where'd he go? Dragon is now Czar? People don't notice? Sends troops to Prague. Probably for better goulash recipe. To build a better goulash."

Well, Mike's stories are usually pretty good. He's never told the same thing twice. His last story was about a village that worshipped a giant clown. They gave up their god and then in the end a giant ceramic clown came to the village and stomped them all to death. It looks strange written down, but I think he plans them ahead of time and it was really cool in the telling.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Probably going to forgive Raph. He's been moping around so much that it isn't funny.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I passed that test. Now on to the next insurmountable task. Funny how insurmountable tasks seem to rise up about every week or so.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I just got a bill in the mail for $750 plane tickets to Cuba. Reconsidering forgiveness.


	4. Chapter 4

_I tried a funny this with strike throughs, like somebody crossed out some things as they wrote, but the website doesn't seem to have the capability. So I changed the strike throughs to italics. Just pretend that there is a line drawn through the italicized words and you'll get the joke._

Dear Diary,

Do your ninjas stop for ice cream while pursued by evildoing ninjas? Well, mine do. Turtles ninja better than you.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Yeah, so. I just found this diary that April's been keeping. This is my side of the story. Okay. I wanted to go to Cuba to get cigars for Casey for his birthday. Johnny No Thumbs has Cuban cigars, but he was going to charge so much that I said to April that we might as well just go there ourselves. It ain't my fault if she can't hold her liquor. Not like Leo. That man can drink a whole barrel of vodka and then cut the wings off a fly with his katanas. Not that he'd tell anybody. That's his problem. Either that or Splinter dropped him on his head a lot as a baby.

And I don't cry. I can't remember the last time. Well, I think I cried when that winch hit me on the head. But I had amnesia for three days. So live with it.

April. I'm waiting for you to except so we can go to Vegas and get married. You're just putting off the inevitable, baby. You know you want me.

P.S. – Please buy me some cheese whiz.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

Please don't kill us for reading your diary. It was under the couch cushions and Don's big butt knocked it out on the floor and it was open to where you were talking about Raph crying and he got all mad and then Don told him that he'd garrote him but we don't know what that means.

Now that my panic has subsided. April, you are the blush on the rose that buys us groceries. I didn't get much sleep last night. That's the best I can do.

* * *

April:

I'm sorry that my brothers violated your privacy. I'll give them a stern talking to about it after I pry Raphael off of Donatello.

I would never drink _that much_ vodka. But if I did I can assure you that I could cut the wings off of a fly and then some. _I could definitely do it better than_

I moved your couch. It's better for the energy in the room. Also, Don keeps bumping into it on the way to the bathroom and I thought I would spare you another trip to the furniture store.

We appreciate _every thing_ everything you do for us. Please don't marry Raph. If you did, then I would have to disown you both. _That was a joke_.

Sincerely,

Leonardo

* * *

Dear April,

Raph just beat me up. I really hate him. Do you have any textbooks you couldn't sell back?

* * *

April, don't listen to Don. His brains are in his ass.

* * *

I'd say the same for Raph, if he had a brain.

* * *

This is Mike. We may need to have another one of those talking stick sessions, minus the talking stick because I have a feeling that somebody would get bludgeoned. And it wouldn't be me.

* * *

April:

I'm so sorry, dear. I'll buy you a new diary.

Leonardo


	5. Chapter 5

_Please don't think that Leo's actions are really pervy in his first scene. I had an appendectomy and woke up to find my mother trying to look at my incision under my blankets. It's a really weird feeling._

Dear Diary,

Well, out of the hospital now.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I woke up in the hospital three days ago with a green face hovering in front of me. At first I thought it was my sister Robyn wearing a Halloween mask. She used to do that a lot. Well, it was our Leonardo. I've started calling them all "our" in my mind. You'd think we were characters on Keeping Up Appearances. I think Leo was trying to peak at my incision because he was pulling back my blankets and trying to get under my gown. I was too disoriented to tell him off. I just sort of groaned and swatted at him.

He jumped backwards and said that he only wanted to see how big the incision was and that Don wanted to inspect my stitches. So he was being professional. Really.

I don't think I've ever felt more disgusting in my life. I think I must have been sweating buckets. I was also really thirsty and begged my green wardens for water.

"Sorry, you can't have water yet. You can have an ice chip though."

This is what it must feel like in hell, I thought. Thirsty and unquenched.

I fell asleep again and I think it was a few hours because I woke up and they were all in different positions. And there was a green frog planter with flowers growing out of its butt. They were from Robyn.

"What happened to me?" I asked.

Leo leaned down really close again. His eyes looked really wide and he was afraid, like he thought I was going to slap him. "You don't remember?"

"Should I?"

"You were jumped on the NYU campus. I still don't see why you have to walk around alone at night." I think that was Mikey. He sounded kind of choked up.

"What? What happened? Do I still have my honor intact?"

Leo made some kind of loud choking or gagging noise. "Oh, nothing like that, thank God. They went for your purse and you fell backwards and hit your head."

"Then why do I have stitches in my stomach?"

Don was across the room somewhere and I couldn't see him. "Simple. You fell on a fence. Looks like your tetanus shots are up to date. That's a mercy." He was shuffling papers around.

"Okay. Hey, where's butch?" We call Raph butch. Because he's big and… butch…

Leo looked towards the door as if he were expecting somebody to walk in. "He's probably going to come on his own."

Mike was crying. Sigh. I could just lift my head enough to be distracted by Don writing on my medical chart.

"What are you doing? Stop that!"

"Sorry. I know I cry too much." Mike was wiping his nose on the back of his hand.

"Not you, honey. Don, what are you doing with my chart?"

Don put my chart back in a slot on the wall. "Well, if you want to take so much Vicoden that you walk around like a crack addict, then so be it."

Leo put his arm around Mikey, who was crying pretty pathetically. He rolled his eyes at me.

"Hey, how'd you guys get in here?" I had a few scary visuals of them knocking out people at the nurse's station to look up my room number.

Mikey lay on the bed next to me and moved my bed up and down and Leo explained how it was a simple matter of sneaking up the side of the building by scaling the parking garage and then leaping from rooftop to rooftop and then sneaking in my window. And Don got my room number by hacking into the hospital database while they were at home. Of course.

"Whoops. Dudes, I just called the nurse." As soon as Mike said it, they had all disappeared out the window. It was a good thing because I needed my bandages changed and such.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Well, Raph just left. He was just sitting here in the dark watching me sleep like Edward freaking Cullen.

"I'm not a fan of this Byronic stalking stuff," I said. "And the guy who draws blood makes his rounds at about 4am. So you'll have to leave soon. Did you get the refund on the tickets?"

"Yes," He said in a pouty voice. "I tried to shake you awake but I think they gave you something to make you sleep." He looked pretty awkward. I don't think he has much experience with hospitals. This was probably the first time any of them had been in a hospital, come to think of it. "Smells like bleach."

"Why didn't you come with your brothers?"

"Ah, Mike's a big weeper, you know. I was out…"

I didn't take the hint that he was offering up and instead pointed at my planter. "See my flowers."

"I should've done that! You're supposed to bring flowers. I'll have to stop by the cemetery on the way home."

I tried not to visualize all of them running around a cemetery at night, looting the grave goods. "This is from my sister Robyn. She's in California right now."

"Are those flowers coming out of a turtle's butt?"

"It's a frog."

"It's not a nice frog. Kind of on the ugly side. I'd get an Extreme Makeover if I were him."

We sat there with awkward silence and I sort of wanted him to leave after a while.

"Did you see those guys who jumped you?" he asked.

Ah, so that was it. He wanted a physical description so he could go after them.

"Thankfully not."

He was instantly antsy and looked back and forth at the window, wanting to leave. "Well, sorry to keep you awake. I'll tell Leo that you look good and that you didn't bring up how he tried to look under your skirts this morning."

I laughed at that. "Is he worried? Tell him that it's cool this time, but if he ever tries it again I definitely will slap him. And is Mike okay now? He was pretty upset before. Oh! Before you leave could you let me see my med chart? Don scribbled all over it. I don't want to wake up with a foot amputated or anything."

Well, it turns out that he didn't really write on my chart and just took notes on his own paper or something. So he has copies of my medical charts for some reason unknown to me. Whatever, he's gone now and I'm going to summon up a nurse to give me more of that really great anti-nausea medicine. It's as much fun as nitrous oxide.


	6. Chapter 6

_I understand that sharing half-chewed gum is really gross, but it just seemed like something cute that little brothers would do with each other. Also, I don't intend to knock Raph's intelligence with his poor writing. I just don't believe that he puts most of his mental strengths to writing. I had an attack of the randoms today._

Tuesday:

I saw that April has been keeping a diary and now she wants me to do it. I don't know why. I think that she thinks I'll 'fess to stuff that she thinks I'm doing wrong.

I signed up with Johnny No Thumbs to be a prize fighter. Sounds like easy money. I wish somebody else would come up with some ideas for money sometimes besides me. Leo and his stupid honor. You can't eat honor.

I need a nickname and a "costume" because it's sort of like a wrestling match. Sounds like the beginning of a bad super hero movie to me. I think I'll just come up with a name and go as the freak that I am.

I don't write too good. I should probably do it more. Maybe let Mike give me English lessons again. Boy do I hate studying. Stupid English. I hate you.

List of stuff to get with the prize money. Because I'll win –

More SDRAM for Don. Whatever that is.

Whetting stone for Leo.

That video game that Mike wanted. Look for title. Zombie… Call of… ?

Splinter. He needs something. Benny the Snake has some good stuff. I should see him.

Pay for April to get a haircut. Woman's hair looks awful.

* * *

_Wedsday _Wednesday:

I can't believe it! I missed the damn fight. I left for the fight and I remembered that I never came up with my fighting name and was thinking about it and of course nothing was coming to me. So then I heard a little noise in the alley. One of those really small, "you're gonna get attacked in this alley and fight for half an hour and be late" noises. I don't think I used my commas right there.

But anyway. I was followed by the foot. There seems to be no end to them. I think they're being cloned someplace. Anyway. I was happy to get in some action and then forgot all about the fight until an hour later because I was busy roaming around looking for more guys' asses to kick.

Too bad I don't get paid for that kind of fighting. I don't think you can find anything bad in what I just wrote.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I just got out of the hospital a few days ago. I read Raph's entry and I wonder how he thinks that there was nothing wrong with saying that my hair looks so bad that he'd pay me to cute it. But I think he's right. My hair looks like I just took a swim in a swamp.

Mike's a good caretaker. I thought that Don would be caretaker of the family, but I think he's more of the surgeon type. He likes looking at the gross fluids but doesn't like helping me sit up. Mike's all about that kind of stuff. Leo hasn't been here. I don't know why. And Raph left again after I made him write that essay. I'm thinking about doing it with all of them. It should be really interesting.

I think Don was right about the Vicoden dosage. He reduced it and I still feel really floaty.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mike and I slept on the couch last night. I might as well have slept sitting up. I'm not comfortable in any position I'm in lately.

Leo and Mike did the grossest thing I've seen! This deserves caps. MIKE SAID HIS MOUTH WAS DRY SO LEO GAVE HIS HALF CHEWED GUM TO MIKE. AND HE CHEWED IT! It was the grossest thing I've ever seen.

Also, I still don't understand how I hit my head and impaled myself on a fence. I have a feeling that I'm not getting the whole picture.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I got the whole story today. Leo was tailing me on the night I was attacked. I still don't really remember it. He intervened somehow after I punctured my gut on the fence and during the scuffle with the perps I fell and hit my head. So he's been moping around in the den blaming himself. I blame the ice on the sidewalk that's never salted. And the criminals. Gotta blame them.

He and Raph had a big spat because Raph said he screwed it up and didn't protect me adequately and lots of other paternalistic bullshit. So he's been off trying to find my muggers and reap vengeance upon them. He mercifully didn't find them and he and Leo made up this morning. It was extremely male. Raph came in and Leo said something like he was afraid that Raph would miss breakfast, you know, pretending he knew he'd show up this morning. And then they shared a stick of chewed gum. No, they didn't. I'm just so stuck on the gum sharing from yesterday. Ish.

* * *

Dear Diary,

It's my first night out since the fencing incident. I still have a hard time walking for a long ways and Don offered to carry me, but I think I'll pass.

Anyway, we just went to the park and back, which is a big production number for them because of security and all that and the ninja precautions. So it mostly felt like I was there by myself being stalked by four green guys.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Really interesting sparring session. They let me watch sometimes. I just sit there in the snow on the roof and drink a juice box and watch them beat the crap out of each other.

Some of the more interesting things I recall hearing:

"Don, did you bite me just now?"

"Why are you standing on your toes like that? Are you expecting to fight a ballerina?"

And my personal favorite from Leo. "Raph, stand behind the line of shame!" Leo had gotten a little fed up with hearing himself referred to as Princess Plastron from his fellow combatants and decided to exercise a little abuse of power. Of course Raph didn't budge, so Leo just redrew the line around him.

Ah, they are an endless source of entertainment.

* * *

Dear Diary,

For some reason today we made a list of stuff that Leo can't do. Raph was particularly involved. It looks pretty weak and still makes me feel like a big schmuck in comparison.

Can't sing. That was the big headliner. His singing was compared to the sound of skinning a live cat. I sincerely hope that none of them know what that really sounds like.

He can't act. I've witnessed this first-hand. The man can't think of a convincing lie when he's on the spot because he's blindsided by guilt.

And finally, he can't ride a bike. And that's only because he's never cared enough to try.

That was all we could think of and I think we are lame in comparison.

* * *

Entry one:

This is Donatello. April has asked me to write my current thoughts in her journal. Right now I'm thinking about Herman Goering. He must have looked hideous dressed like a woman. It seems to me that if anybody has the audacity to cross-dress that they should at least look reasonably attractive. I believe that he was also a cocaine addict. Maybe that gave him enough extra charisma and personality to pull it off.

I was thinking about wallpapering the lair the other day. But I don't think I could come up with any adhesive that could resist the dampness. I'll have to pull out my super secret stash of chemicals and try to make a bonding adhesive.

What's the purpose of the moon? It just sits there and doesn't really do much. Why was President George W. Bush so eager to colonize it? We can't even successfully colonize Alaska. How are we going to set up mini-malls and post offices on the moon?

And speaking of Alaska, why is that show Ice Road Truckers so popular? It's like the whole purpose is to watch people driving big rigs across ice and go, "Sink! Sink!" And why are truckers so ugly? Is there an ugly trucker gene?

Why is Leo so much taller than the rest of us and why is Mike short? I want to do DNA tests on us but whenever I draw blood from Raph he beats me up. I thought that doing it in his sleep would be a mercy to him because I know he's afraid of needles.

That's what I was thinking today. And the milk. It's bad and we need more.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Well, it turns out that Don's mind is even more random than his conversation.

* * *

Leo's Blog-

I write this, to let you, April, know my thoughts.

I meditated for over four hours yesterday.

Will I ever be able to release my selfish desires and become truly lucid to the world around me? The more that I cling to my own obsessions and desires, the less I see of the truth in nature and man. But I fear that I will never overcome myself because I fear the loss of self. To become one with everlasting and all encompassing knowledge means losing your own identity. To open the boundaries to self to the limitless expanses of the universe. Don't our own human desires link us to the world and construct our identity? Finally, I felt totally at peace with myself, past and present and resigned to the loss of a future for my soul. For the soul is finished with the final realization of reality. Was this it? I heard bells in the distance and had lost all contact with the temporal world around me. My home. My family. Our mission. I was nothing, lost in the universe. Again I heard the chime in the distance. Had I finally reached nirvana?

Turned out it was the oven timer.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I asked Mikey to write me a little essay about his thoughts, but he has to prepare it, so I think he's going to hand me a complete novel.


	7. Chapter 7

_The driving scenario happened to me when my mother taught me to drive. It's sort of a family tradition to scream at teenagers while they're panicking on the road. _

Dear Diary,

So I spent Friday night translating ancient scrolls. I told Don that I could be out on a date instead of cooped up with him translating Elgar the Horrible's final decree of devastation upon his return to the foundations of his kingdom, exactly 300,000 years in the future, which just happens to be this year of course. He laughed. I hit him upside the head with his Cuneiform to English dictionary.

His translation was off and so Elgar the Horrible still has about 10,000 years before he melts the city. I'll mark it on my calendar.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I had my weekly counseling session with Splinter. I mostly sit there on the couch and rant about my problems while he nods and says supportive things. He asked me to teach his boys how to drive. I laughed out loud for a second until I realized he was serious. He knows that they have a need to drive and he wants them to know the rules of the road to keep police officers safe from being knocked out.

I thought I'd teach the problem child first. I thought Raph would have a really hard time taking instructions. But he listened like a big green angel. We drove at night on abandoned streets, so I don't know how he'll do when he's confronted with traffic.

Don did pretty well too, except that he kept talking all the time and he missed some of my directions.

Mike was a lot more difficult. It wasn't for lack of trying though. He's left handed and has a real problem telling his right from his left and east from west and I kept saying things like, "Go up to Ellis Street and head East." And that made absolutely no sense to him. Mostly we sat at every street corner while he said, "What? Which way? Towards what? What's by there?"

And guess what? My problem child was my presumed angel. Leo was the one who was the hardest to teach and I still feel really badly about what I said to him. It turns out that he gets really insecure when he thinks that he looks incompetent and he's so capable that he doesn't have to deal with that problem very often. I don't think it's such a problem when Splinter teaches him because he's his parent and he knows that Splinter isn't judging him. But I feel bad now that I know that he thinks that I judge him.

It started out okay. But he missed a stop sign and I told him so as we coasted past it and he snapped that it would have been nice to have a warning and it wasn't fair to make him guess. Well, okay. He was nervous and I let it go. Then he stepped on the breaks really hard and I threw my arms out and unconsciously stepped down on the floor boards like I was vicariously driving the van.

"What are you doing? I know I'm a bad driver! You don't have to rub it in!" He said that really angrily.

I kept my mouth shut. Then he did okay for a while, but then he looked away at the gas gauge for too long and I yelled as he nearly sideswiped a fire hydrant. All I said was "Look out!"

He turned the car off and turned to me and said, "Well, I don't see why you're making me do this. If I wanted to be made fun of I could have stayed at home! I'd do a lot better if you would be quiet!"

I'm not used to any of them yelling at me and if it was Raph I wouldn't have minded because I know he just yells for no reason. But with Leo it was really awful because I know that he rarely raises his voice.

But I made it even worse. I really let him have it.

I said, "You ungrateful child! That's all you are! I don't care if you do carry katanas and kill ninjas! I have ten years on you, junior! And you'll respect me when you're in my car or else you can get out and take the sewers back! Now shut up and drive!"

I instantly had a flashback to when I was learning to drive with my father at exactly the same age and he screamed, "I'm you're father and you'll respect me! If you don't like the way I teach, then you can get out of the car and walk home! Why are you crying!"

He wasn't crying because he just doesn't do that. He was really quiet though. He looked like he didn't know if he should get out of the car or stay there. So I got out of the car to signal to him that I was going to drive. I took him home and haven't spoken a word to him since.

Back at the dungeon de Turtle, Splinter was obviously upset by this and Leo went straight to the training room. Splinter said that his oldest doesn't get upset much and that he would talk to him about it. Raph was hanging around, eating a really gross sandwich and his eyes bugged out when he heard that I had screamed at him. I was blubbering really badly and he offered me his smelly sandwich.

So I haven't heard from him since yesterday and I'm waiting for Splinter to call me about it. But I might just go over there and apologize. I feel really rotten and I'm thinking about skipping class. I might have a crying jag in front of everybody. I can't stand the idea that Leo, or any of them for that matter, are mad at me.


	8. Chapter 8

_Preamble: I realized that I mention the boys drinking an awful lot and I in no way condone underage drinking. But I figure that if these guys can fight ninjas and monsters, then they ought to have a drink once and a while. I also realize that there is some kind of weird comic aging thing where they were supposed to grow to full size within a few days of mutating, but what kind of fun is that if we can't write about cute little turtle kids? And the scientific sex joking just made me laugh, even though I'm not sure Leo would condone it. I didn't intend to have Leo get drunk, but also, it made me laugh. I just enjoy writing drunk dialog. I haven't seen the movie __Elizabeth__ all the way through and I don't remember if the scenes that I relate are accurate._

Dear Diary,

Mike finally gave me his musings. It's not a novel or even a story.

* * *

Dear April,

I, Michelangelo, being of sound mind and body, do hereby provide you with an old page of scribbling that I found lying around the lair. I think I must have been really little when I wrote this and it made us all laugh when we read it the other day. I hope it gives you a laugh too.

My name is Michelangelo. My name is long and hard to spell. I have four brothers. We are turtles. My father is a rat. My fathers name is Splinter. Don told me to use punctuation. He just spelled that word for me. He is my best friend. We do lots of cool things together. He bit me yesterday. Raphael is my other brother. He sat on me and took my candy. Raphy is mean to me. He pinches me when we share a blanket. Leonardo is my other brother. He is cool. He always holds my head under the water when we take baths. It is fun.

We are learning to be ninjas. It is really cool. I use none chucks. Don don't know how to spell that. Splinter is really smart. He is old and knows everything. We all love him lots.

We live in the sewer. Its not very nice. There are bugs all over the place and Im afraid of bugs. Raphy aint afraid of nothing. He said that just now and wanted me to right that.

Leo's real tall yesterday we ate hotdogs we found someplace I want to learn how to ride a bike. My favrit tv show is I dream of geeknee. She lives in a bottle.

The end

You know, Raph still pinches me when we share a blanket. I see that my spelling has marginally improved. I don't even remember watching I Dream of Jeannie. Isn't that weird?

* * *

Dear Diary,

I was a little alarmed at first when I read that Leo used to hold them under the water when they took baths, but then I remembered that they're turtles.

Leo just left. He came over to resolve things from the other night. I heard a knock on the door and unfortunately my friend Susan was over. We were watching a stupid movie that objectifies men. I had to tell him to go away and come back later. That didn't help my guilt at all.

And then Susan had to keep asking me who that guy was that I had just told to leave and she came up with a whole secret and forbidden romance plot. I asked her what kinds of romances are forbidden in this day and age and she was kind of stumped. She wouldn't leave until after midnight and as soon as she was out on the street, he knocked on the door again.

"Were you waiting that whole time?" I asked.

"Well, I didn't want to go home. I took Raph's hooch. Plus I left him in charge and when I left he was cackling maniacally and rubbing his hands together and stuff."

"Why'd you take his booze? Isn't that the same stuff Don used to degrease my engine?"

We sat down and had a drink and I crossed my eyes every time I took a sip. I set it aside after I had drained quarter of a glass.

"I didn't think that you drank," I said, watching him down his glass pretty quickly.

"Well, only in special circumstances."  
"I should get arrested. This is, like, the fifth time I've been drinking with a minor now."

"Does it make you uncomfortable?" He looked worried. "I'll get rid of this if you'd like."

"No, I know that you're responsible. And you guys aren't typical kids either. But Raph does talk about drinking a lot. It makes me a little nervous."

Leo laughed and took another swig. "Don't worry about it. He goes through phases."

We watched the first half of Elizabeth because none of his brothers would vote for it on movie night. I wasn't going to let him leave without talking about the other night, but his body language was making me nervous. He kept crossing his legs and tapping his feet at the same time, like he was having trouble preventing himself from bolting out of the room.

Then the other three jumped in the window to complain to Leo about Raph's repressive regime at home while he was away. Apparently, he had threatened to staple Mike's mouth shut and had hit Don over the head with a hub cap.

I finally got them to settle down and watch the rest of the movie. It got to the part at the end where the handmaidens are all crying while Elizabeth has her hair shaved off so that she can transform herself into The White Queen. And then she said the line, "Now I am become a virgin."

"What does that mean?" Mike asked.

Raph leaned over to Leo and mumbled in a small and worried voice, "Didn't Splinter have that talk with him?"

Mike was offended at his presumed ignorance and said, "I know what 'virgin' means. I don't get why she said that."

"She's giving up her life for her country," Leo said patiently. He patted Mike on the head condescendingly. "She's giving up her personal life in order to lead her people."

Raph slapped Leo on the shell and said, "It's a good thing we don't have any friends for you to give up. Otherwise it would make being a leader really hard."

Leo sighed and hung his head.

Mike still wasn't satisfied. I looked around, wondering what Don was up to. "Don where are you?"

"I'm behind you." He was sitting at the kitchen table out of my line of vision. "I'm reading your biology book. I wish I could go to college. That would be so cool. I could meet other smart people."

"And none of us are smart?" Leo asked, repressing a smile and throwing back more moonshine.

"No comment," he said.

"I still don't get it," Mike whined. By this time the movie was over. "She's talking about becoming a virgin again. I don't get it."

I heard Don say from the kitchen, "Mike, when two people love each other, their gametes fuse to form a zygote, which implants itself in the uterine wall and replicates itself and in nine months there's a baby. And that's the meaning of love. It's all a trick of evolution to keep the human species going."

Raph said, "Wow, that was really kinky."

"He should send it to Playboy." Leo and Raph were acting like two frat boys, jabbing each other in the ribs and drinking liquor so strong that it could take the corrosion off a car battery.

"That speech would make a great form of birth control," Raph said, trying to one-up Leo.

Leo would not be outdone. "That should be a new way of editing rap songs. They should replace the edited words with stuff like 'gamete' and 'meiosis'. Like, 'All the ladies in the club get ovulating'."

Raph fell off the couch laughing.

"Enough of the disturbing sex talk, please," I said.

They both kept giggling and poking each other.

Mike was still dwelling on Elizabeth's declaration of revirgining and hadn't been listening. "I still don't get it. Why did she say that?"

"I think she was screwing around with some guy and he dumped her." Raph is always quite the poet.

Leo said, "She gives up her personal life symbolically. She obviously can't make herself into a virgin again. It's symbolic of dedicating her life to her people and leadership. I'd think that a writer would understand that kind of symbolism."

Mike playfully tapped him on the knee with one of his nunchucks. "I didn't see the whole movie."

As they were about to leave, Leo turned to me, obviously drunk, and said, "I'm sorry if you were offended earlier. I don't talk about ovulation much."

I scratched my head at that declaration. "It's fine. Please don't talk about it ever again."

Raph was singing the chorus to "Uptown Girl" over and over and I asked Don and Mike if they could get the two reprobates home safely.

"Wait, Leo!" I pulled him aside as Don tried to sneak my biology textbook out the door. I let him keep it because I wouldn't need it for another week. "I wanted to talk to you about the other night."

"I'm so sorry, April!" he said melodramatically. "I'm just so sick of doing everything right all the time. It's so exhausting. And I already know how to drive; you were just making me nervous."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"You looked so cute. All important." He leaned up against the wall and stuck his hand through the drywall. "Oops. But I My father scolds me every day because every time one of them screws up it's my fault. Where did I go wrong with them? My children don't listen to a word I say! And I gave up my virginity…"

"What?" I was sure that was a mistake, but I thought it deserved an exclamation of shock anyway.

"I mean I tried to get it back… I don't remember. I did whatever Queen Elizabeth did when she picked her people over friends and a life and all that shit. Who needs that?"

Raph had fallen asleep, leaning against the doorframe.

"Well, I'm really sorry that I said those things." I wondered if he would remember any of this later. "It wasn't my place to say that."

"No, no, no!" He waved his hands in front of my face like he was swatting at flies. "You're still my friend right? May I hug you? I don't want to violate your personal space."

He hugged me before they left and squeezed the air out of my lungs. I thought that Raph would want a hug but he pushed me backwards and made a face. Then Leo hugged Mike and then Don and also tried to hug Raph, who shoved him and said some pretty exotic stuff.

I grabbed Mike by the arm and hurriedly told him not to let them drink for a long time. He nodded in agreement.

I was pretty disturbed to see Leo so drunk, but also happy that he had forgiven me. I used the rest of Raph's hooch to clean the kitchen drain. It foamed up on contact and ate off all the rust and calcium.

And apparently Mike's been following his brothers around in the tunnels yelling, "I lost my virginity! Please help me find it!"

* * *

Dear Diary,

Splinter was really upset after Leo and Raph had the hangover of the century. It was pretty normal for Raph lately, but I don't think Leo's ever been that wasted and probably be for several years, if ever. Splinter finally ordered the 'still to be destroyed and they had a mourning period before they found some new dangerous thing to play with. A 4-wheeler. Now they whiz back and forth in the sewer tunnels, jumping off, flipping in the air. I hope I get a ride.

I am determined to hug Raph. No matter how sneaky I have to be, I will do it!


	9. Chapter 9

_Don't worry about the sort of serious ending. I'm thinking of a really funny payoff._

Dear Diary,

I've been home sick for three days now. I think Don's sick now too. He keeps sitting next to me groaning and holding his stomach.

Leo chased Mike all over the apartment. Mike's quick like a little jungle cat and the others all run around, trying to catch him. They were both vaulting over the couch while Don and me sat there groaning at them. Raph was forced to make our lunch. All I can say is that neither of us hung on to it for very long.

My boys watch soap operas. The Puerile and the Fidgety was on and they seemed to know every bit about every character's life. Don narrated the show for me. He said, "Kayla is married to John, but she used to be married to his brother Philip. Philip was married to her sister Katie. Katie's in a coma right now but Raph thinks she's really dead and that the girl in the bed is really their identical triplet. There's one out there, but nobody knows where she is. That's Enrique. He's sleeping with his stepmother. She used to be married to Enrique's brother."

It seems like everybody in that town is married to a relative or being kidnapped.

Leo finally caught Mikey and grabbed him around the middle and swung him around in circles. It was pretty cute. It was also exhausting to watch them leaping over the furniture like gazelles when I couldn't even stand. And scary. Many lamps have been sacrificed in that game.

Don slept here because he was too tired to go home. Leo told him to leave and he just looked up at him and whimpered. We sat up all night on couch with our feet propped up, under a blanket, watching people sell gardening equipment on infomercials.

At around 3am, while Jessica Simpson was pitching Proactive and Don was thinking about buying some so that he could extract the active ingredients, the neighbors started yelling and pounding on the wall. I could hear them arguing in Spanish.

I couldn't understand a word they were saying, but Don had his head cocked and said, "You tell him, Maria. Boy, he gambled away all the money for the gas bill." Ninja ears don't miss much.

We slept on and off and threw up on and off.

Somebody knocked on the door. I looked at the clock and realized that I'd lost about six hours. "Go away! I mean, I'm indisposed. Come back later."

"This is Lewis!"

Don was asleep. His head was hanging back and his mouth was open. I shook him awake. "Hurry, hide! That Lewis guy is here!" I'd told them all about Lewis. He had 57 girlfriends last year, by his own proclamation and the proclamation of other girls in the class. He was hell-bent on me and came by to give me empty compliments while I calculated the quickest way to get rid of him.

Don hobbled to the door and yelled, "This is April's boyfriend! Who are you?"

"I'm a friend. Lewis. We have class together."

"I don't let April have friends!" Don said, imitating Raph's voice. "She's my woman! Mine! Now get lost or I'll come out there and kick your ass! And don't come by here again!"

Lewis didn't respond right away. "Okay. I'll see you in class, April." I think it took him all that time to come up with a witty reply like that.

Don limped back to the couch and collapsed. "That ought to keep him away for a week or two. If not, then we'll do what we did last time and have Raph make those threatening phone calls. He really enjoyed that."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Lewis came back the next day. I think he forgot that Don had told him to get lost.

I told them all later in the week when I was at the lair to bake cookies with Mikey. When I told them about Lewis' latest visit, Raph got this big evil smile and picked up the phone, dialed Lewis' number and said, "Is this Lewis? Yeah, my bitch told me that you've been stepping on my turf."

Splinter walked out of the room grumbling to himself.

"I don't care if you only wanted to 'hang out'. Do you think I was born yesterday? I know that means sex."

I laughed, covered my mouth and got flour all over my face.

"Hey, I keep my women satisfied! I do too! Do too! Do too!" He made a face like he realized that he'd let the conversation get escape his firm grasp of control and said, "If you bother her again, I will come over to your house and cut off both your hands, take them home and mail them back to you first class."

He hung up and then jumped up and down, laughing at his own wit.

Leo didn't look too pleased.

"I'm going to write that one down in case I have to pretend to be you again when he comes over," Don said.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Bad day. In pain.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Yesterday was so strange. My face is all swelled up. Don tied the ice around my face so that I can have my hands free to write. I'm never talking to Raph again.

* * *

Dear Diary,

How am I going to go to class looking like this? I already missed a bunch of time last week when I was sick.

I don't really remember what happened. Well, I remember what happened before and after. Earlier in the day I had gone over to the lair. Don has this crazy scheme to try to get Splinter social security. I was going to tell him that I thought that the social worker might notice that he isn't human when they come by for an interview.

Anyway, Raph was the only one home. He was asleep on the kitchen table, drooling on a newspaper. I bent down to see what he'd been reading. He was looking at the sports page probably checking up on his bets. I put my hand on his shoulder to wake him up and he sat up bolt upright and threw his fist back in my face. I don't remember if I was knocked out, but I remember lying on the floor for a really long time in a perpetual mental loop thinking, "Holy crap. He just hit me. Ow."

When I came to my senses, Leo was looking into my face, cringing. "What happened?" I asked.

His eyes darted back and forth evasively and said, "How do you feel?"

"Like Raph punched me in the face. Where is he?"

"Dude, he split," Mikey said. I couldn't see him and then realized that I was lying in his lap in Donny's little infirmary.

I asked, "Why were you making that face just now? Does it look that bad?"

Leo looked as somber as a priest at a funeral. "Well, it's pretty swollen and Don says it'll bruise. What did you do to him?"

"DO!" I yelled. "Ow." It made my head vibrate with pain. "I touched him while he was asleep."

"Do you have a death wish or something?" Don asked. He put a cold compress on my face. "Well, it looks like he broke your nose. The left nasal bone, to be exact."

"That's a new one," Mike said helpfully. I started crying and he patted me on head. It hurt. "I don't think he's ever broken a nose before. Not any of ours anyway."

"Don't worry. Splinter will have a talk with him," Leo said. "He's punched me in his sleep more times than I can count. He's a really light sleeper and sometimes he sleepwalks and stuff."

I didn't particularly care. Intentional or not, he'd broken my nose and hadn't stuck around to see if I was okay. They took me home and I've been sitting here with ice tied to my face trying to think of a way to get out of class until the swelling and bruising goes down.


	10. Chapter 10

_I hope you all enjoy Marvin Harris' theory on culture. Probably not. It takes an ex-anthropology student I suppose. I was thinking today that Donatello would probably love his work. It made me laugh because I'm a geek._

Dear Diary,

We haven't seen hide nor shell of Raph for a few days now. It's just as well because I can't stand to see him right now. I know intellectually that it was an accident, but I can't shake the feeling in my heart that he did it on purpose. That sounds really stupid, but it's true. I haven't told any of the others because Leo's been so dismissive of the incident. Just because he punches him all the time in his sleep doesn't mean it's okay to do the same to me. Splinter hasn't said a word on the subject and I have a feeling that he won't be quite as dismissive as Leo has been when Raph gets back.

I bought a keyboard the other day. I used to play the piano when I was a little kid and I hated it at the time, but now I sort of miss it. I had a perverse image of all the boys standing around the piano singing Christmas carols, like a scene out of Little Women. I tried to block it out right away.

Face feels a little better. It's more swollen and definitely bruised though. I'm going to be marked down a whole letter grade, so I might need to go in to the doctor to get an excuse, but I don't know how to explain it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I just got back from the emergency room. They asked me what happened and I said that I walked into a door. It was sort of a grim joke I guess, since I'm really covering for somebody. I might as well do it up right. The nurse and the doctor looked suspicious, but nothing was done. They gave me an official doctor's excuses so that I can stay home from class. I'll spin by NYU tomorrow and drop them off.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I found this letter under the door this morning.

Dear April,

I was going to go see you last night and didn't because I thought you probably don't want me around yet. How are you doing? I'll pay to get your nose stratened. I'm not at home so don't bother calling them looking for me. You can call me if you want or not whatever. I might come by sometime.

R.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Somebody needs to help him with his spelling. I wonder what he's been up to. He's been gone a long time.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The title of this entry is "Everything You Wanted to Know About Raph's Brain and Then Some." Or "Cultural Materialism: A Turtle's Perspective."

I went over to the lair to deliver Raph's letter so that they would all know he was still alive. Also, Don had left me a rather disturbing voice mail message saying that he was going to pay a wino to pose as Splinter for the purpose of Social Security Administration interviews.

"You can't get social security unless you pay into it first. Ever think of that?" Ha, got ya!

"Not if you're me," Don said, pulling up some falsified W-2 forms on his computer. I live in fear.

I showed them all Raph's letter and Don and Mike sat around criticizing the skill of the writer. Leo sighed with relief that he was okay and then laughed affectionately at his offer to pay for a nose job.

"Why is Raph like that?" I asked. I expected a shrug from Don and then more debate on the fake W-2.

Leo sat back, looking thoughtful and then said, "Why do any of us do the things we do?"

He'd been doing this all day. He was in amateur philosopher mode and answered every question with something like, "Why does…?" "Who really…?" or "Why do we…?" I felt like asking him, "Don't you ever shut up?"

"I know why," Mike said. He was on the computer taking a quiz on Facebook called "Which Twilight Character Are You?"

Don was watching him over his shoulder. "Enlighten us then."

"Raph's just a real simple guy. There's not that much to figure out. He wants what he wants, you know. He wants food. He wants to hit something. He wants to sleep. Whatever. He doesn't think much about it."

I thought, _Are you sure you're not referring to yourself?_

Leo pulled his expression out of the clouds and looked a little annoyed at Mike. "He's not an ape or anything. You make it sound like his personality doesn't have any subtly or complications. He's actually very complex."

"Oh, how?" Mike said, skeptically clicking an answer to his favorite color.

"He's very contradictory. He's blustery and gruff and yet secretly very sensitive. He's ashamed of that sensitivity. That's why it's so important for him to appear as being constantly brave and tough."

"I think you're giving him too much credit," Mike said.

"No, I can see that," I said. I was distracted, wondering what Twilight character the quiz would come up with for Mikey.

Leo went on. "But there's more. Growing up, he's always tried to balance my personality. Because I tend to be rather passive aggressive, he's become… uh…"

"Overtly aggressive?" Don offered.

"I suppose. "

Don brushed Mike aside so that he could print his W-2 forms. "I think you're making it much more complicated than it has to be, Leo. I believe that it all comes down to cultural materialism."

"That's making it less complicated?" Mike asked, as he hit the results button on his Twilight quiz. "What's cultural materialism?"

"It's Marvin Harris' anthropological theory on how ideas are nothing but reflections of the practical realities of existence."

Not Marvin Harris. "Not Marvin Harris," I said. "Spare me."

"No, listen. Have you read his work on the Hindu sacred cow? It's great. Finally, an anthropologist who has devised a way to evaluate culture scientifically instead of by redefining the word culture by his own desires or standards and then attempting to force that definition on others. That's totally arbitrary."

Leo said, "Can we ever really force our ideas onto others?"

"But Harris takes everything down to calorie count. Tell me how Raph's personality flaws are about calorie count?" I instantly regretted asking because I knew he would explain.

"If our ideas are a reflection of how we deal with the difficulties of survival, then it could be deduced that Raph's ideas are ways to deal with his attempt to survive. And what is the fundamental reason for survival?"

"I'm Rosalie!" Mike said. "How did that happen? I'm not a baby obsessed shrew!"

"Exactly!" Don said. "Reproduction is the fundamental drive for survival. To pass on your DNA to another generation."

I didn't like where this line of reasoning was headed.

"So underneath all the ninja training and the high Mortal Kombat scores and whatever interests he has, it all breaks down to an innate need to reproduce. And calories are essential for reproduction. It's what makes us fertile. But there's a catch. While Raph has the innate need to reproduce and to hoard calories by work and greed, he can't ultimately fulfill that need. There aren't any females in our species. And so his unfulfilled need of sexual congress and to disseminate his DNA is thwarted. There's an impasse. And that frustration is exhibited as aggression towards others who can reproduce. To promote his own species, all he can do is to eliminate those who compete for the calories that he uselessly hoards."

I had no clue what he was talking about and half the time I don't really think he knows what he's talking about either.

"So let me get this straight," Mike said. Wow, he was actually listening and understood. I have to say that I underestimate him sometimes. "You're saying that Raph knocked out April because he can't find anybody to have sex with so he has this unexplained need to get rid of humans because he can't spread his spawn the old fashioned way?"

"Yeah, that's what I mean. How does this W-2 look? It's from Waste Management. I'm going to set him up as a garbage man. Seems fitting."

"So Raph's an asshat because he can't get laid." I was determined to make Don see the problem in his logic.

Leo left the room. I don't think he'd been listening for a while.

"Well, essentially yes. The thing I find so helpful about cultural materialism is that it can be measured. I've designed some experiments to analyze Raph's thoughts. I've had him answer questionnaires and stuff about his thoughts. His behavior can be measured against what he believes and how those beliefs reflect his struggle to survive."

"Well, have you studied the rest of you?"

"Yes."

"And if this theory of yours about Raph is true, then why don't the rest of you exhibit uncontrolled anger towards others? You all have the same inability to get laid, unless you three have a secret that I don't know."

He was stumped. "Well, we have other ways of dealing with it."

"And Raph doesn't? Why not?"

"I'm not sure. I'm still working on that."

"And if this aggression is supposed to be directed at others who are competing against his species, then why does he beat up you guys?"

"Because he naturally has the need to compete with his own kind to promote his own DNA. Easy, April."

"I don't like Marvin Harris. I don't like thinking of people's beliefs as nothing but ways to screw others out of calories. I'd like to think that there's some altruism left in the world. It assumes that all behavior is selfishly motivated. Charity is only a way to keep beggars off the streets because it causes stress on others and stress is inhibitive of reproduction. I just don't like that line of thinking. And another thing, if the Social Security Administration finds out that you were lying and they implicate me, I'll be the one in a federal court, remember."

"You would be up against an administration judge, unless they sent it up to the federal courts," Don said. He couldn't let one go, could he? But we keep him anyway.

Well, Raph's still gone. Probably trying to kill humans in an attempt to clear out competition for resources because he can't reproduce. I think it's much more obvious than Don is making it sound. He's just embarrassed and afraid of how we'll react.


	11. Chapter 11

_Please forgive all the funny song lists. Just amusing myself once again. Just a bit of character fluff._

Dear Diary,

Today I was thinking about ringtones and how much they can say about a person or turtle. My ringtones are just whatever I think is cool at the moment, like I have "Superstar" by Lupe Fiasco for Mikey, but I didn't put lots of thought into it or anything. I was just tired of "Wind it Up" by Gwen Stefani and wanted to replace it with something new.

But I think that Don and Mikey both put lots of thought into their ringtone choices and both lists are pretty amusing. I don't know what they've assigned for me, but I'm going to find out.

Mikey's ringtone for Donny is "Mr. Roboto" by Styx. Makes sense. His ringtone for Raph is "Hate Me" by Blue October. So every time Raph calls him his phone erupts with, "HATE ME TODAY! HATE ME TOMORROW!" Seems really appropriate, in a sick way. His song for Leo is "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay and it seems to make Leo kind of pissy. I guess because the leader is bad in that song so he takes it personally.

Don's list makes me laugh. His song for Mikey is "Everybody Dance Now" by C+C Music Factory. Makes me laugh every time I hear it. His song for Leo is "Hail to the Chief." Every time Leo calls him, it sounds like it's the president. Raph's song is "Vader's Theme." I have nothing to say about the implications of that.

Leo 's songs are all things he meditates to. He listens to freaky music that would give me a panic attack of relaxation. But I suppose that's the only thing you can stand if your whole day is nothing but meditating, kata and Tai Chi. Whenever Raph calls, his phone plays this sad song called "Live With Me" by Massive Attack. I didn't know the names of his songs and had to ask him what they were. His song for Donny is "Requiem for a Tower." I always feel like something epic will inevitably happen whenever Don calls him but it's usually something like they're out of milk. Mikey's song is "Sadeness Part 1" by Enigma. He listens to a lot of these guys. There's lots of female heavy breathing and Gregorian chanting and I can't really explain why it bothers me. I guess I don't like hearing Leo's phone make any sexy noises for any reason.

Let's see. Raph's phone. I remember that he mostly listens to 90's grunge and stuff because he hates hip hop of any sort. I can't really remember and I'll have to ask when he gets back. Counting eight days since he left. My nose feels much better and I've stopped wearing the bandages now.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Sigh. Those guys. I found out what songs they have set as my ringtone.

Leo's song was just another of his freaky relaxation songs. "Bittersweet Symphony" by The Verve. You know, that one that ripped off the Rolling Stones.

Don's song is "I am Woman" by Helen Reddy. That made me laugh. Again.

But Mikey's tops them all. "My Chick Bad" by Ludacris. But wait. It gets better. It used to be "Sexy Bitch" by David Guetta until it gave Splinter such a headache that he made him change it. Seems he's gone through a few. I was informed that his first choice was "She Fucking Hates Me" by Puddle of Mudd, but Leo forced him to change it. Poor kid. I'm flattered that he's gone to such lengths to think up a cool song for me. And I'm worth it because, you know, "my swagger won't quit."

Still no word from Raph. The guys are getting nervous. I passed nervous about a week ago.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's ringtones are "I Need a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler for Leo (he said that he chose it as a joke a few weeks ago and hasn't gotten around to changing it back to "Devil's Haircut" by Beck), "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" by Smashing Pumpkins for Mike, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana (of course) for Donny, "Kick Some Ass" by Stroke 9 for Casey (I could say endless things on this, but won't), and finally "Push It" by Garbage for me because he half-way crushes on Shirley Manson. I mean he would if he were human, I guess.


	12. Chapter 12

_I didn't really come up with reasoning behind the injuries. I just thought it would look disturbing. And I don't really like the idea of explaining everything he does. Also, I know for a fact that Vicoden makes quiet people talk a lot._

Dear Diary,

Do you ever get the feeling that you're being watched? Well, my diary probably doesn't because it's an inanimate object. Or maybe it does. I look at it all the time. I have that feeling constantly nowadays. I had a strong sense of being-stalked the other day as I headed to my van after class. My night class ends at 9:30pm and I have to walk across campus in the dark. I've had lots of safety speeches from Leo, but I think they've mostly just made me extra paranoid instead of extra safe.

I hurried into the van and locked the doors. As soon as I hit the lock button, a man grabbed me, screaming and pushed me into the driver's side door. I nearly wet myself. It was Raph. He was laughing like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

I don't remember what I said, but I think I called him a few names that would have gotten my mouth washed out with soap if my mother had heard. He kept laughing.

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE A RAPIST!" That was me obviously.

"I thought Leo gave you those anti-rape lessons. Guess they didn't work."

He couldn't get it through his head that it wasn't funny and my attempts to pummel him didn't seem to make his mood any more serious. I got out on the road, trying to restrain myself from whacking him as he climbed from the back seat where he'd been lying in wait and into the passenger's seat.

"Ten days. You've been gone ten days."

He turned on the radio. Avoidance, thy name is Raphael.

"So are you just passing through?" Normally I would have been nicer to him, but he had just made me think that I was about to get raped to death and he was still trying not to laugh about it. So I wasn't feeling particularly sensitive at the moment.

"Passing through? No, I'm home."

We drove for a while in silence. After a while I forgot about him. I went into that driving trance and when I snapped out of my self-hypnosis I was about a mile closer to home. For a split second I thought Leo was sitting next to me before I remembered that it was Raph. He was sitting sort of stiff and upright and I couldn't figure out what was different about it for a second. Then I realized that he usually sits with his arms and legs all splayed out and he had his hands tucked under his knees. Leo sits up really nicely with proper posture.

"Hands cold?"

He winced a little. "No."

"Why don't you call home? They could meet us at my place."

"I'd rather not."

Avoidance. No explanation either. Whatever. "Well, you can crash with me I guess."

We just got home and I'm going to go to bed.

* * *

Dear Diary,

What's the best way to get an anti-social turtle to talk? Give him a bunch of Vicoden. I don't prescribe this method for people.

We got into the apartment and then I saw that Raph had blood dried all over his front and hands and even his face. I've seen them bloody before, but I don't remember seeing them walking around that way until it dried. He looked exhausted.

"Have you eaten lately?"

Shook his head.

"Slept?"

Shrugged.

"Good to see that you were taking care of yourself."

"Hey, I was getting stuff done out there. What was Leo up to this whole time? Listening to whale calls while he tries to reach nirvana? What good does that do anybody but him?" He half collapsed at the table and took off his mask. I wonder if he wears the red mask to hide blood.

"What's up with your hands? Looks like you pounded on a brick wall." His knuckles were scraped and raw.

I was glad he didn't answer because I was pretty sure that I didn't want to know what he'd been up to. He said, "How's your nose?"

"Look for yourself." He looked the other way. "It's fine now. It hurt like hell for a while. If hell hurts. I've never really gotten that expression."

"Being in hell hurts. The fire and all that."

"I guess so." I gave him a cup of tea and sat down at the table with him. I don't really like tea and tried not to grimace, but I know they drink lots of the stuff.

It was your typical night at home with a traumatized and broody teenager. We didn't talk during dinner although he ate three whole plates and then he took a shower to wash off the blood. Just like your typical teenager. We sat around watching TV while he sighed heavily. But then I noticed that he was flicking his hands and rubbing his knuckles a lot.

"Want some Tylenol?"

He nodded. He's a big communicator. I wished that I had Leo there to translate for me. I searched the bathroom and couldn't find any painkiller. "I don't have Tylenol, but I have some leftover Vicoden."

"That'll do."

I handed him the bottle and he swallowed two before I could stop him. "I think you should have only taken one."

He shrugged. "Well, you'll just have to put your toothbrush down my throat if I overdose."

We watched TV again for about forty-five minutes and then out of the blue he said, "Did they crash the 4-wheeler yet?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Didn't." He pulled his knees up to his plastron. I don't think I've seen him do that before. Mikey does it, but Raph doesn't. "Stuff doesn't last long at home. I was going to get them a motorcycle but didn't get around to it yet."

He was quiet for about ten more minutes and then said, "I hate TV."

I scratched my head. We'd watched for about three hours and I wondered why he'd never said so before. "Want to do something else?"

"No. That's okay."

Quiet again. I was getting tired and had to fight to keep my eyes open. Just as my eyes dropped shut he started to talk again.

"Maybe I'll call Leo. Wait. He'd come over. I won't do that. Maybe Don. Ugh. If I called Mike, he'd tell Leo and Leo would come over anyway. What if I sent a text message and pretended to be somebody else."

"They would still see that you sent it," I said. I was privately prepping myself to check the Poison Control Center website.

"Yeah, that's true. Maybe I could send a text from your phone."

"Why? They would know it was you. You're just going to say, 'What's up, mother bitches' right?" That was his affectionate salutation for his brothers.

"Not if I wrote it like you."

"Why do it then?"

He thought for a few seconds. "Good point. Think Don could build a robot of Shirley Manson?"

"Probably. I think that's a rather bone chilling idea though. Have you already put the idea into his head?" I tried to block out the endlessly grotesque possibilities of my boys building robots of their favorite female celebrities.

"No. I don't want to get his hopes up. He could probably get started on a robot version of you as practice."

I felt of his forehead. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I feel fucking tired."

"Maybe you should go to sleep." I got off the couch as an invitation for him to lie down. He just sat there, with his eyes roaming around the room. "Hey, wait a minute. Why would you want a robot version of me when you have the real me?"

"We couldn't hurt a robot. Don could fix it. Not that you're a bad version. But a robot would be better."

I was seriously thinking of tape recording him so I could play it back for him later. Oh, the shame. So he talked nonstop for over two hours. I think this was the first time I've ever thought I would die from exhaustion.

"…and then me, Leo and Don would make these tricorn hats out of newspaper and pretend to be The Three Musketeers and we would go out rescuing fair maidens. Mikey always had to play the maiden because he was the only one who could fit into the dress. We have Polaroids of him in the dress if you want to see them. But he was hard to rescue because he always ran away when heard us say, 'Don't worry, fair maid! We'll rescue you!' Sometimes he would hide and we would go to Splinter and tell him we'd failed in our quest to save the maiden and ask him to give us a judgment as to whether or not we should live. That was always Leo's idea. I wanted to take the king's money and buy better hats. Don wanted to build a snare and catch him like a rabbit. But Leo said it would be ungentlemanly to hang a girl upside down by the feet because you could see under her skirts, even if it was Mikey pretending to be a girl." His head was drooping and he was fighting to keep his eyes open. I had hope.

"Lie down." It was a command. Not a request.

He mindlessly obeyed. I fetched some blankets and covered him up. He finally shut his eyes and just as I was about to creep to my bedroom he said, "I'm real sorry I hit you. I'll try to do better."

I felt like I should tell him that he did fine, but it would be a lie. He was fighting to keep his eyes open. "I get why you hit me, due to the ninja reflexes and all. But why did you just leave? It wasn't a ten day disappearance kind of situation. I mean, sure, it hurt. And I was embarrassed to leave the house…"

"You should hit me back."

I laughed because I thought he was joking. "Well, I can't, honey."

"Sure. Everybody can. Just give me a good slap. You're the only person I've hit that couldn't hit back. You should learn."

"Well, I wouldn't hit you even if I could. I don't hit my family."

I started off for my room and I heard him say, "I do."

So yeah, the angst and the schmaltz were strong with us last night. I had this dream that I was about ten years old and was playing with Robyn. We were fighting over a red fire truck and I tried to take it away from her. She slapped me and I told her not to hit her family. Then I realized that we were in church and that it was Easter Sunday and I was really embarrassed because I was in my pajamas instead of my Easter dress and bonnet. Robyn was playing "Doxology" on the pipe organ.

Then I woke up. Somebody was playing "Doxology" in my living room. I opened the door as quietly as I could and saw Raph hunched over the keyboard.

"You play the piano?"

He jumped away from the keyboard and looked like I'd just caught him taking money out of my wallet or something.

"Well, I only know three songs. We had a hymnal once that we found in the garbage and a crappy keyboard that didn't work too long. Mikey's pretty good actually."

So you learn something new every day. Raph can only play "Silent Night", "Doxology" and "Happy Birthday." He went home right after that because I threatened to make him play some more. I called Mike to warn him that Raph was coming. Somewhere in the depths of the murky New York City sewers "My Chick Bad" reverberates down the dank tunnels. I heard him yell, "Raph's coming! Arm the cannons!" as he hung up.


	13. Chapter 13

_I know I'm sort of stretching the timeline now and I don't think they were supposed to have been out of the city when they went to Casey's farm later. But hey, it's my story. I can do what I want with them. P.S. – The Turtles aren't mine. Just the story. Thought I should clarify in case anybody thought I was Peter Laird or Kevin Eastman. hehe_

Dear Diary,

There has been a threat hanging over my life lately. That threat's name is Donatello Hamato. Last night I was on an instant messenger chatting to him while I pretended to write one of my final papers when he told me to go to the window and look out. I did as I was told and saw a small flash of heat lightning. I thought was a little odd because it's only April. Nothing happened and I sat back down at the computer. After a while he asked me if anything happened. I said there was just a little heat lightning. He said, "Cool! It worked!"

My mind wanted to cycle through all kinds of horrible possibilities, but I honestly couldn't figure out what he'd done, so I couldn't have my horrible mental visions of disaster. He initiated a file transfer and I reluctantly accepted. I opened it, having no idea what to expect. It was a blurry picture. He typed, "Do you know where Breton Avenue is?" I responded that it's a few streets down. He said, "I couldn't get it any closer than that. Sorry." It came to me in a flood of realization. "DID YOU JUST HACK INTO A SATELLITE?" He logged off.

This is almost as bad as that time he remotely changed the NSA network screensavers to flying toasters. His goal was to make it onto the president's morning security briefing.

Once he offered to change all the streetlights on my route to and from school so that I would only hit green lights every day.

I'm so going to prison. And it will be all his fault.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo came over today to make some kind of formal extension of Hamato family shame on behalf of Raph. I'm not much for his formal family shame-a-thons so I just told him that it was between me and Raph.

"He said he would try to do better," Leo said. "So that's encouraging."

"Yeah, but doesn't he always say that?"

Leo sighed and looked sort of resigned. "Yeah, I know he says that a lot. But I can only hope that one day he carries through on the promise. I don't doubt his sincerity, only his commitment."

"Well, I'd sure like him to be committed to not hitting me again. And I see that you're preparing for another rendition of 'It Was An Accident' and I get that."

There was a knock on the door and Leo leapt to attention like a professionally trained soldier. I asked, "Who is it?"

"It's me. Lewis."

Leo automatically approached the door to pretend to be my angry boyfriend, but he took a minute while he adopted a rather aggressive stance and then spent a minute to wring his hands. "This is April's husband. Please leave. I must defend my wife's honor at all costs and I will not have people in the building thinking that she is frequented by male callers."

Ah, Leo. You're such a dork. But I suppose it's not your fault. You grew up in a sewer and never saw a woman until you were fifteen. But Mike and Raph are relatively cool, so I don't know if that's really a valid excuse.

Lewis didn't answer for a long time and I thought that maybe he'd left. Then he said, "Okay. I'll come back later. Bye, April."

Leo deflated a little when he heard Lewis leaving. "Sorry about that. I have a hard time faking anger."

"Just use method acting and try to remember something that one of your brothers did that made you mad." He should have an endless supply of inspiration, considering who he lives with.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I was having my nightly gabfest with Don and he told me the funniest sad story I've ever heard. We talk every night and I think he's turning into my closest girlfriend. This must be rectified immediately. I need to call Susan or something.

I was telling him that my earliest memory is when my dad took me to the ocean when I was three and I followed him into the water. The waves went over my head and I remember thinking, "Goodbye world. It was a short run. I've failed at living." Pretty advanced for a three year old.

Then he said, "My greatest fear is to be forgotten."

Awe. Poor Don thinks nobody notices him. I said, "Don't worry about that. You're very important around there. I'm sure they think more of you than you think they do."

"It's not that. I'm not Raph or anything." What? Confused now. "I'm afraid of being left someplace. Like a purse."

"But you can find your way home, you know."

He was quiet for a second, probably mixing liquid fertilizer for his next illegal bomb and said, "My first memory is that time that Splinter left me out in one of the tunnels and forgot me. I thought I was going to die. He said it wasn't very long, but Leo said that they didn't miss me for a long time. Like a few hours. Raph said that Splinter forgot me, like, five times. I was a pretty quiet kid and I didn't talk for a while so…"

I laughed while I said, "That's so sad. I'm sorry."

"I have this recurring nightmare where I'm wandering around the streets with no idea where I am and there aren't any street signs or manholes or anything. I guess it's better than that giant preying mantis dream of Raph's."

"Do Leo or Mike have recurring dreams? Give me the gossip."

There was a funny banging sound as he shifted pieces of machinery around. "Well, Leo has this dream where he wakes up screaming, but he won't tell anybody what it's about. I think Raph knows. I'm sure sensei knows. But they won't tell us. I'm not sure about Mikey. He probably only dreams about food and going through tunnels and stuff."

* * *

Dear Diary,

How funny. How funny and horrible. I don't have any money! That's not the problem. The problem is Lewis. I don't have any money!

The lack of financial anything just keeps creeping up in my brain like a biting bug. It jumps into whatever thought or conversation I'm having. I was trying to listen to Master Splinter tell me a story about a tiger that chased its own tail until it died. The meaning had something to do with fear of progress and at the end I blurted out, "I need a job!" I don't really want a job. But I want money. The two go hand in hand.

Lewis problem. He came over here and I didn't have any little turtle brothers hanging around so I foolishly let him in.

"I wanted to ask you if you wanted to come see my cage fight," he said. He's not really bad looking. He would be considered fairly good looking by some girls but there's still something really repulsive about him. I'm not sure what it is.

"I don't really fancy watching you get beaten unconscious. I could spend my time a better way on a Saturday night." Probably watching Leo floss his teeth or Mikey playing Guitar Hero.

He got all flirty and coquettish, for a guy anyway, and said, "Oh, you hate me right? You're hurting my feelings that you don't believe in me." He added, "That was a joke."

He always does that. He has to add this "joke" postscript to the end of all his statements because I'm such a delicate flower that I can't tell a joke from a real insult. I can out-sarcasm him any day.

Then he got serious, which kind of shocked me and said, "April, I'm real worried about you. I'm a good guy and I like to show my affection for others and I like you a lot. So I wanted to come over and show you that I care."

I backed away a step or two.

"You're married and have a boyfriend, April. That ain't right."

I just stood there trying to figure out what he'd just said. How could he have gotten that idea? As far as he was concerned I only had one turtle boyfriend. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Your husband told me to get lost yesterday. But I heard him saying that your boyfriend, you know, who broke your nose, was sorry and wanted you back. What a pig! You need to dump him. Both of them. You need to lose them both fast."

"What? Huh? Who said… Wait a minute! You were listening in at the door, weren't you?"

Lewis grabbed my cheeks and looked into my face melodramatically. "You are worth more than this, April. You are a beautiful woman. I saw all those bruises and I know that you said that you accidentally fell on a fence this winter, but I know better. Your boyfriend did that too didn't he? I think you need a real man, like me. Who'll treat you right."

I pushed him away and held the door open, waving towards the hallway. "I don't need a lecture from you about my personal safety. My brothers… husband… angry boyfriends…. Are more men than you'll ever be… and they're not even men… so get out and don't come back! If you ever come back here or call me again…"

Lewis just couldn't get the hint. "April, you don't have to take this. Break free from his restraints!"

"GET OUT!"

Lewis headed reluctantly towards the door. "I'll leave because I'm a gentleman. But I must say that I'm not surprised that you have more than one man. You have such a pretty smile and I think you must have really interesting things to talk about. I was looking forward to getting to know you and to find out about your hobbies and stuff, but I guess I'll just have to wait until you've cooled down. I'll see you in class unless your boyfriend or your husband kills you first. That's a joke." He finally left. I'm not telling the boys because I fear that Lewis will be wedgied into the next millennium.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Next weekend is 4th of July weekend and I'm going to take the boys camping. For real. Not a joke. Mikey said that he'd never been at a real beach in the daytime in the sun and everything and seemed really sad about it so I'm going to find a deserted place up north around Lake Ontario and we'll camp out for a few days. Hey, it could be as long as we want. None of us have jobs or anything. Shit, that's depressing. Anyway, I think it would be a good idea to get Donny out of the city and away from the temptation of the yearly bomb-fest that they call fireworks around here. I'm not sure that Splinter's going. I have a feeling that he wants the lair to himself over the weekend.

Preparations are being made. Hopefully, this trip won't be too interesting.

* * *

Dear Diary,

It's that time of year. The time of year that determines the most important defining fact of our lives. Not elections. It's whether or not Raph remembers to have his birthday before the 4th of July.

Leo is oldest. He declared it to be so when they were little and the others weren't big enough to resist. He set his birthday as January 1st. Mikey wanted to have his birthday on Christmas so he could get more presents than everybody else. So he's youngest. Donny wanted the 4th of July. But Raph doesn't like anything predictable, so he doesn't pick a date. He just declares it whenever he feels like it. But he doesn't always remember it before Don's birthday. So some years he's older than Don and some years he's younger. The rule is that if he doesn't remember before July 1st, then Don is automatically the new second oldest. It's June 20th and he hasn't remembered yet.

Today I gave Don a contract that read:

"I, Donatello Hamato, or Hamato Donatello, depending on how American I'm feeling, hereby promises not to bring any explosives, bombs, noxious chemicals, ancient scrolls, ancient relics, ancient talismans, ancient anything, mysterious metal objects, mysterious organic substances, mysterious machinery, mysterious gems, mysterious anything. Nor will I spit, vomit, urinate, spill or in any way let gross fluids touch April O'Neil's van, possessions, or person at any time. Nor will I bring or carry back any wild animal, living or dead, to or from the campsite."

He sent it back with an addendum.

"Donatello Hamato, or Hamato Donatello, reserves the right to be held harmless for any and all behaviors deemed inappropriate by his brothers, namely, Leonardo Hamato, Raphael Hamato and Michelangelo Hamato. He will also not be held responsible for any spontaneously appearing or opening portals, aliens, trans-dimensional beings, mutants, tears in the space-time continuum, ninjas bent on revenge against the Hamato clan, drug dealers, crazed psychotics, evil shaman or mad scientists who happen to find us in the woods. April O'Neil also agrees to provide Donatello Hamato or Hamato Donatello with a birthday cake, presents, and any and all paraphernalia deemed necessary for a happy birthday. She also will agree to allow him to bring back samples of plants and insects."

We're still in negotiations.

* * *

Dear Diary,

So I found a list that Mikey made for the trip. It said:

"For trip to Lake Ontario. Goals:

1. Wrestle bear

2. Jump deer

3. Grab fish

4. Catch bird

5. Scare Raph with bugs"


	14. Chapter 14

_I'll give you money if you understand the amontillado reference. If the reader is a fellow girl, then you will feel poor April's pain. The curse always strikes when you're out in the woods, surrounded by boys._

Dear Diary,

Well, today is the day. We leave for Lake Ontario. We've been carrying stuff back and forth to the van through the sewer tunnels. Mikey keeps yelling, "To the amontillado!" Yeah, that never gets old. It freaks out Donny and I suppose that's why he keeps saying it. Nobody else even notices anymore.

I'm going to drive and Donny called shotgun. He's going to be the navigator. I was afraid that Mikey wanted to be navigator for a while, but he brought some walkie-talkies so that he can taunt truck drivers. So I think he'll be satisfied with that.

After all the junk was packed, Leo sat behind the driver's seat and then Mikey sat next to him, behind Donny. Raph stood in the open door of the van, staring at Mike for a second and then said, "I'm sitting there."

"Why?" Mikey was tuning his walkie-talkie, trying to pick up a signal.

"I'm going to sit by Leo."

"Well, I was here first."

Raph picked Mikey up and physically through him over the seat, into the back. He didn't really seem to notice and just went back to fiddling with the walkie-talkies.

Leo was checking the map. He laughed and said, "Don't fight over me ladies. There's enough to go around."

* * *

Dear Diary,

It's the middle of the night and we're sitting alone at the first rest stop.

Don brought a bunch of homework for them to do, which they were all obviously thrilled about. I guess he and Splinter figured it would be a good opportunity since they would all be trapped in an enclosed space with him and unable to escape. He interrogated them all about pi and Mikey said something like pie is a flaky pastry full of fruit and/ or meat. Leo said 3.14 something-or-other. That didn't satisfy the professor, who asked him what "something-or-other" stood for.

"How should I know?" Leo said. "You don't use the rest of it when you calculate circumference anyway, so what's the point of remembering?"

"It's very important!"

Raph had hurriedly done the problem wrong, handed it off to Don and then refused to correct it. He was taunting a female truck driver over the walkie-talkie, using his seductive voice, saying stuff like, "Yeah, I'll meet you at the next stop. What are you wearing?"

"How will knowing the full number of pi help me be a better leader or to fight our enemies?" Leo asked.

That was a good question. We all looked at Donny waiting for an explanation. All except Raph who said, "Wow. Must be hard to drive a truck wearing a thong."

Don squished up his face, thinking for a minute and then said, "If you're ever cornered, um, circled by foot ninjas… You could calculate the area of their battle lines."

Leo simply asked, "Why?"

"So you could know how big a blast zone there would be for using C-4."

Mikey raised his hand like a good little pupil.

Don called on him. "Yes, Mike."

Mikey said, "Wouldn't that blow him away too since he's standing in the middle?"

"Oh, yeah. He communicates it to you using hand signals and then flips over the heads of the foot to get out of the way just in time. You were hiding nearby with the detonator."

So this in how ninjas do story problems.

"Next problem. If two ninjas are coming at each other and one of them is going 30 mph on a moped…"

"A moped?" I asked. "You've seen armies of ninjas rolling around on mopeds?"

Don ignored me. "Anyway. One is on a moped going 30 mph and you're standing on top of a train going 80 mph. The moped and train are heading towards each other, but not on a direct path. You have approximately 10 seconds before the moped has passed you by. In how many seconds do you jump off the train?"

"Neither," Mike said. "I'd pull off one of those stair rails on the end of train and use it to knock him off the bike."

"Sure. That works," Leo said.

Don was having a hard time keeping their concentration. It didn't help that Raph had to say at that moment into the walkie-talkie, "I have tons of prophylactics. I buy them by the case. Don, what are prophylactics?"

I laughed out loud and Leo mouthed, "Condoms."

Raph looked horrified and turned off the walkie-talkie. "How come I would have to jump off a moving train at 80mph? Wouldn't that kind of kill me?"

"Are you afraid?" Mikey taunted. Mikey was sitting on the curb drinking the biggest fountain soda I've ever seen. Raph sat next to him and took a few hits off the soda.

"No way. I'd do it. I'd just want to grab onto something on the way down and swing to the guy. You know, take some of the momentum off the fall."

"That doesn't make any sense! How do you know that there would be a bar to pull off the train or that there would be any structure over head to grab on to?" Don was losing his already tentative hold over their attention.

"How do we know there isn't?" Mikey said.

"How many seconds!" Don yelled in frustration.

"Three," Leo said, guessing an arbitrary number. I wondered if the Benadryl had been stuck in the glove compartment like Leo had warned.

The math problems ended when the students just ignored the teacher and all boarded the van.

"How does it feel to be demoted to second to youngest?" I asked Raph.

"Ah, it's fine." I was expecting a little more angst about it.

Mikey put an arm around Raph's shoulders. "It's just you and me again. The little ones."

"Yeah, yeah. Get in the back." Raph threw him over the seat again.

We're on our way for the second leg of the drive.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Sitting at rest stop number two. Somehow we ended up getting off on the wrong exit and had to circle around and lost about an hour. So a five hour drive has now become a six and a half hour drive. It's getting a little grey on the horizon so I'll need to kick them all in the back where they won't be seen pretty soon.

Mikey's sitting on the curb again with another gigantic fountain soda and one of the walkie-talkies in the other. I think Raph has walkie-talkie number two. Mikey said, "Falcon, give me a status on your location."

I could hear Raph say into the other walkie-talkie, "Well, base, the location is full of urinals and toilets. Also some sinks. Somebody threw a bunch of wet paper towel balls at the ceiling."

"Any ID on the perpetrator?" Mikey asked.

There was a staticky buzz while Raph didn't respond. Then he said, "Yeah, perpetrator is a big, ugly turtle. Wearing purple. Over. Leo, don't fill those bottles in here. That's gross. Those sinks are probably diseased. Well, the germs at home are ours."

The glamorous lives of super heroes.

Getting back on the road. Leo just pulled out his CD collection. I now realize that we'll be regaled with the collected works of Enigma for the rest of the trip.

* * *

Dear Diary,

False alarm. He didn't make us listen to his CDs. We finally got to the campsite. Actually, we're illegally squatting on federal land. I spent about four days calling campsites going, "Are there any people around? Any people? Any people at all? What about hikers? Park rangers? Well, thanks anyway." So we're going to just set up camp on the beach on federal land. We've picked a spot that's in a little bay, so that passing boaters won't see us. As long as the boys don't set the woods on fire, we'll be fine.

We got to the maintenance road and rattled our way out to the beach. I realized when we finally reached the end that I'll have to back the whole way out because there's nowhere to turn around.

They're setting up the tent now. I figured it would be cheaper to get a really big tent than three small ones. But I have sacrificed my privacy for economy. Whatever. We've all seen each other naked. Might as well all sleep together too.

They just spent, like, two hours trying to build a fire. I have a pilot lighter and I got really pissed that they were determined to do it using rocks and leaves and bark and stuff. I was getting really hungry and Don kept blowing on a pile of smoking leaves with Mikey saying, "Quit it. You're blowing too hard."

I lost it and said, "Maybe I should start sacrificing virgins to Vulcan. Maybe that would help. There are four virgins here and I'm not one of them." They were all quiet for a while and finally let me break out the pilot lighter.

It's really hot out and they still had to build that blasted fire. They keep chasing each other and leaping over the fire. Somebody's going to fall in. Mikey and Raph are dancing around the fire, making Indian war cries. I think this being declared the second to youngest business is making Raph regress back into childhood. Either that or Mikey just influences everybody to be immature.

I'm going to bed. I just drove for about eight hours. I'm losing it. Nobody had better crush me in my sleep. If so, I leave all my stuff Robyn and the three turtles who didn't roll over and suffocate me in my sleep. To whoever kills me, I leave nothing.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Woke up and Leo was the only one in the tent asleep. It was about 2pm. Boy, I feel like crap. My back really hurts. I wish Don would quit slamming the door on the van. What is he doing?

Crap. Got my period a whole week early. How am I going to get the van out of here to get tampons?

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just got back from getting the tampons. Couldn't escape Mikey for a while because he kept following me around asking me what I was doing.

Why'd they have to build that stupid fire? It's so hot and now there's smoke and ashes everywhere. I sit down and the smoke just follows me wherever I go.

"What did you get at the store?" Mikey asked.

"Nothing."

"You brought back a grocery sack. Get any candy?"

"Why would I get candy? You didn't ask for it. Am I supposed to read your mind? Raph, you didn't just drop three hotdogs into the fire, did you?"

"I couldn't help it. I'll save them, if it's that important to you." He tried to grab one with his hotdog stick.

"I'm sick of driving and if we run out then I'm not going back to get any more."

Later in the day all four of them went swimming. I could hear them yelling and splashing around. I just lay on the shore in my clothes like a zombie. I feel like somebody's drilling into my back. Why isn't the Ibuprofen working? I should have gotten Tylenol. I could hear Mikey saying, "Raph, I dare you to catch that bird that's flying by."

There was a splash and then a bunch of male cheering. I guess he got it. He'd better not try to cook a seagull for dinner.

Going to sneak back to town for Tylenol while they're busy.


	15. Chapter 15

_April's personal reflection on her childhood is… ahem… a mutually shared memory… ahem… Mikey's pretty naughty in this chapter. I'm working on making him act his age a little more, but he's so cute when he's bad. I had a really bad day today, so I think this chapter feels a little weird and choppy. But I don't think I'll edit it, so here it is._

Dear Diary,

I realize now that if I died they probably wouldn't even notice. When they got out of the water I was half-asleep on the shore and I think that Don even stepped over me. Mikey poked me with a stick to see if I was conscious. I swatted him away and called him a big green gnome.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"You look sick. Why don't you come in the water?"

"I don't feel like it."

"Why not? I want to check you out in your new swimming suit. I bet you'll look hot."

I sat up and felt about 30 bones cracking. "How would you know? You're not even a mammal."

He scratched his bald head. "Got me there I guess. You're acting really pissed. And you stink. You should go swim around before we have to all get in the tent to sleep."

"I don't want to swim!"

"You bought a suit and you don't want to swim?"

"I'VE GOT MY PERIOD, OKAY!"

Boy, I think that even the birds stopped singing, it got so quiet. The other three had been running around on the beach and they all stopped. Don fell in the sand on his face.

Leo decided to help the situation by nagging everybody. "Mikey, leave her alone. Do you need anything, April? Should we go into town and get something? Raph, be quiet. Put the radio away."

"I'm not dying or anything. I mean I could swim, but I just feel like laying here." Mikey put his arm around me. That little marshmallow.

It got dark and Leo said, "The little ones should go get more firewood."

Mikey started off for the woods. He came back and tapped Raph on the shoulder. Raph said, "Oh, yeah. That's me," and went with him into woods.

Donny is a big pyro. He kept throwing more and more stuff in and watching it burning and saying, "Cool. Are there anymore plastic cups to be burned?"

We're still waiting on Mikey and Raph. We can hear them running around and laughing, so I don't think they were eaten or anything. I spent most of the night lying on my back looking at the stars while Don burned noxious plastic materials and Leo sharpened a katana. It was nice and quiet actually, except for those little green forest spirits running around in the trees calling each other names. So now I'm in the tent, waiting for the other three to go to bed. Leo is in his sleeping bag.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Didn't get to sleep until really late. I haven't spent a night like that since I shared a room with Robyn and we would giggle all night.

I remember bits and pieces. I remember Raph saying, "Mike, did you pee yet?"

That really caught my attention. What did that mean?

"Yeah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Raph, you're embarrassing me."

"Well, you're sleeping next to me, so I want to be sure. You drank an awful lot of that Tang."

I had to ask. "Mikey, you wet the bed?"

"Not for a really really really long time."

"Six months," Don whispered to me.

Leo defended Mike's honor. "He tends to drink too much before bed and then he sleeps really hard. Has nothing to do with his bladder really."

"Let's not talk about my bladder. Say, Raph, how much hooch did you bring?"

"What!" Leo shot straight up in his sleeping bag.

Raph whacked Mikey in revenge.

I don't remember how that talk turned out but eventually we moved on and Donny asked me what it felt like to get a period. "Why are girls so cranky and emotional when they have The Curse?" he asked.

"It's hard not to be emotional when you feel like you have the flu but you have to do everything you would normally do and don't get any pity or exceptions and you can't even acknowledge that something's wrong."

Leo was still awake. I was amazed. "Wow, that sucks."

"I remember my first period." Raph covered his face with his pillow and screamed in protest. Apparently, he can decapitate a guy with a trowel but can't listen to my first menstruation story. Too icky! "I was eleven and I was on this overnight trip to a children's museum with my whole class. We all slept in sleeping bags in this gym. I figured out that I had that problem and told my teacher and cried and she told me to go to bed and that I was imagining it."

"That teacher should have been fired!" Don said.

"Well, it held off until I got home. So it was fine."

Raph uncovered his face and said in a squeaky voice, "I remember my first period. I was on a date with this really cute boy named Timmy. And I was wearing my new poodle skirt and when I looked down…"

"Raph!" Leo warned.

Then I argued with Don about the classification of Pluto. The planet, not the cartoon dog. "It's in the Kuiper Belt and thus it should follow, Kuiper Object," Don said obstinately.

"Well, are the other Kuiper Belt Objects round?"

"No, but what about its orbit? It has that wonky orbit that crosses into Neptune's path and it's tilted. What's up with that?"

"Trying to be a rebel, I suppose," Raph yawned.

We've replayed this argument about five times and it always goes the same way. I said, "It has a much larger mass than those other things in the Kuiper Belt. It's bigger than just a common Kuiper Object."

"Yeah, well," he said, crossing his arms in his sleeping bag. "If it's so big then how come it hasn't cleared its orbital path?"

"It has moons!" I said desperately, knowing where he was going.

"It doesn't have the mass the clear a path. All other eight planets have cleared the path in their orbit and neither Pluto nor Eris has been able to do so."

Leo was lying on his side, with his shell facing us. He said, "And in conclusion, Pluto and Eris are Dwarf Planets and have been so classified by scientists. Amen, hallelujah. Now shut up and good night."

I woke up in the morning to hear Raph bellowing, "YOU LITTLE PEE POT!"

"What's that funky smell?" I asked Donny, who was hiding in the tent, listening to the argument.

"Oh, Mike pissed all over Raph. I think he did it on purpose after he called him out on it last night."

"What? That's repulsive. And also kind of funny."

Leo marched them both into the woods and gave them a good talking too. I couldn't hear what he said except that he used the words, "immature," and "embarrassment," a bunch of times. They all stomped back to camp, the perfect trifecta of sulkiness, with Leo in the lead, Raph a close second and Mikey bringing in the rear. He was a little buoyant because he had gotten revenge on Raph by pissing all over him, plus he'd also gotten him yelled at. Don has just pointed out that I shouldn't end sentences with prepositions.

I told Don that if I ever have a daughter I'll name her Lily. Don liked that name. Raph doesn't have any names that he likes. Mikey's favorite girl's name is Dido. Go figure. Leo snapped that he doesn't plan out baby names because he already has three children to take care of and couldn't handle any others, although a baby would probably be as mature as they are.

Leo wants to teach me how to swim. Might give it a try.

I had to take the tent and Raph's sleeping bag into town to the Laundromat.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I just put on my new bikini. I hid in the van for awhile because I knew that as soon as I was spotted I would be thrown into the lake. The instant that I opened the van door Don threw me over the shoulder and tossed me into the lake. Leo told him to go do something, but he said it in Japanese and I think it was a threat because he looked really insulted.

If I were a teenage girl turtle, I would so be in love with Leo. Thinking back on teenage crushes makes me feel really old. I used to crush on this kid who was the captain of the hockey team. He was on the swim team too. Also basketball. Sheesh. I wonder if that kid ever ate or slept. Anyway, Leo carried me out into the deep water while I clung to his shell and I think I put my fingers in his eye sockets as I hung on. But he was really patient and I felt really accomplished until we got back to shore and I realized that I'd only really dog paddled about three strokes and I then I felt like a big schmuck. I think I gained a wee bit of confidence in the water. I stopped yelling, "I'm going to die!" after a while anyway.

The other three were off in the woods hunting. They didn't bring guns or anything so I think this is some kind of new ninja brand of hunting. So I sat on the shore and watched Leo being perfect. He caught a fish with his bare hands, did some kind of Tai Chi exercises, cooked my lunch on the open fire, and I just sat there kind of feeling old and useless while he ran around looking like turtle perfection. I imagined what they all would be like if they were human teenagers. Leo would the all-star captain of everything, Raph would be in jail, Don would some kind of super hacker and Mikey would probably be living in a religious cult.

Then the others all got back to camp and Leo decided to put on his "Raph's bitchy wife" hat and screamed at him for bringing back a live raccoon that he'd caught in the cooler box. I could hear it hissing and screeching and thumping around. He was planning on suffocating it and then making a 'coon skin cap for himself.

Leo gave us all a little speech about sportsmanship and the value of all life. All organisms should be respected and we should not be looking for a cheap kill. Every fish in the lake had a life force and that we were causing an irreparable rupture by killing them and should only do so out of absolute need and appreciation for the deaths we were causing. Raph was bashing the raccoon's brains out on the cooler box during the speech.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Their goal today is to catch some prey to eat for dinner. They're all on this, "Me catch food for woman," kind of thing. Don is building a rabbit snare right now. Leo keeps saying it's stupid and that whoever catches the thing also has to skin it. I think he presumes that the task will fall to him otherwise. Raph skinned his raccoon and then Don rotisseried the corpse and ate it. I have a feeling that he's eaten these kinds of things before in a pinch.

Don has set up a bunch of snares and booby traps in the woods and I'm afraid to go in there to use the little girl's room. I might need a chaperone or directions or something.

Mikey tickled Raph with a blade of grass and Raph jumped up and down, flipping out. He keeps brushing himself off and flapping his arms, imagining bugs crawling all over.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Ugh. It was getting dark and colder and I was still walking around in a bikini. I could see Raph eyeballing me and I had this evil feeling that he was waiting for me to change so he could spring something on me. I waited until I thought none of them were looking and got into the van as quietly as possible, locked the doors and crouched awkwardly down in between the seats. As soon as I was totally naked, a key goes in the door, it opens and Raph asks, "Can we go into town and get bug spray?"

"You snuck up on me for that? Is my bra up there?"

He passed me the bikini top.

"That's not a bra."

"Well, excuse me. I don't know ladies underwear. So can we do it before the store closes?"

"I'll think about it." I was still trying to crouch down, hoping he couldn't see, but I realized he was watching over the seat. Sigh. "Turn around!"

He automatically turned around and put the key in the ignition to turn on the radio. I heard the door open and Don got in next to him. "What are you guys doing?"

"I'm naked back here, by the way!" You'd think I'd be horrified by the fact that teenage boys were watching me change, but instead I absolutely freaked out at what Don was carrying in his hand. "Are you drinking?"

"Yeah, why don't I ever get to drink?" He was draining the hooch at an alarming rate.

"Did you drink this whole thing?" Raph asked.

"Oh, no. Mike had the other half."

Raph bolted out of the van out the driver's side door yelling, "Mikey! What are you doing?"

Turned out there hadn't been nearly as much in the bottle as Raph had estimated. Don just talked a lot and kept laughing at his own jokes and it put Mikey to sleep right away. We're going to leave him sleeping next to the fire in case he does a repeat of last night, unintentionally this time. It's too late now to get Raph's bug spray so he'll just have to live without it.


	16. Chapter 16

_My mother stepped on my kitten's head once and cracked its skull. I still feel nauseous thinking about it. I promise that the previous depressing sentence is relevant to the chapter. Now, I know nothing about butchering animals or taxidermy so bear with me._

Dear Diary,

Had the strangest night. We were all asleep, as far as I know, and I heard this gut-wrenching scream. I laid there with my eyes closed at first; afraid of what I'd see when I opened them. Then I remembered I was in a tent with the boys because I heard them moving around next to me.

"What's wrong?" Raph asked in a tired voice. So it wasn't him.

Mikey said from out by the fire, "Who was that? Was that you, Raphie?" I forgot that we'd abandoned him out there.

"Where is it?" I didn't recognize the voice at first and then realized it was Leo. He was muttering in a guttural voice that I heard him use before.

I finally sat up and saw that Don was still lying next to me asleep. Leo was sitting up and looking around under his sleeping back as if he'd lost something.

Raph took a hold of his hands. "It's fine. I have it."

Leo kept looking back and forth. "Where…"

"What was that?" yelled Mikey from afar. I don't know why he didn't just come in and check for himself.

Raph was still holding on to Leo's hands, trying to keep him from getting up and leaving the tent. "It was me, okay!" he yelled out to Mike. "Mind your own business!"

"It's lost," Leo said. He sounded a little more panicked. I don't think the fact that Raph was holding his hands still was having the comforting affect that he was hoping it would.

"Do you need help?" I asked Raph.

He ignored me and pulled out his bandana from under his pillow. He pushed it against Leo's plastron. "Here it is. I found it. Now lay down."

"I might hurt it…" Leo said. He was holding it really carefully like he thought it might break somehow. Then he put it up to his nose and smelled it. For some reason, the familiar stinky Raph smell made him relax and he lay back down.

"Don't worry about hurting it," Raph said. "It'll be fine."

Leo was asleep as soon as he hit the pillow. Raph rubbed his eyes for a second until he realized that I was sitting up and had seen the whole thing. I think he was embarrassed because his shoulders kind of hunched up.

Nobody mentioned it in the morning. I think it's one of those things where they pretend it didn't happen because it's too awkward to talk about. But I'm not sure that Don or Leo remembers what happened. And Mikey never figured out what happened, although he did ask once. He got a smack on the head for it. Probably Raph doesn't think Leo remembers it and doesn't want him to find out. He's been unusually well behaved and listened to him with an almost saintly attitude so far. But it's only 11am. So it won't last that long.

Worried now. They're all going to go in the woods and try to catch a deer. They're having a contest. Whoever gets a deer wins. I asked Leo what they win and he said, "Honor." I asked Don and he said, "The head! I'm going to stuff and mount it! Won't that be awesome!" Mikey said, "Bragging rights." Raph didn't say anything because he was already in the woods, stalking prey.

So I'm going to spend all day by myself.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I called Splinter and had a long talk. I think he's a mite lonely, although he would never say so. He asked how they were all behaving and I lied and said they were all being really good and hadn't caused any trouble. It didn't take a psychic rat to figure out that something was up, since he couldn't hear any of them in the background. So I just told him the truth that they were all out hunting because they wanted to bring him back a deer head. He was really interested and not mad at all. I was surprised. He said he was looking forward to hearing how it went.

I told him about the episode with Leo last night and he said that it happens a lot and not to worry about it. He understands the dream and it is typical of a person in Leo's position. Okay.

Dear Diary,

Raph got a deer! Holy crap. How am I going to get this in the van? He jumped out of a tree, landed on the deer's back and broke its neck.

Now Leo's back with a deer. Double crap. He just chased one down and sliced it with a katana. So it's in two pieces.

Don has one snared in the woods and needs helping getting it down. Definitely no room for three deer carcasses. And Leo's is oozing all over. Still no sign of Mikey. I hope he doesn't get one too.

Okay, they want to butcher them before we leave so that we can take the bits we want and save some space. Taking the head of Don's deer. No idea where that will go. On the top of the van. Wait no. It's out of season. We'd get pulled over and stuff. In the furthest seat back, I guess. The antlers from Raph's deer. Had a big rack. Leo doesn't seem to care about the rack on his.

Donny's never butchered anything as big as a deer, but they've had to butcher animals they've found in the sewers when times were tough. Especially when they were too young to go to the surface. He seems really nervous though. He's literally shaking with excitement and bouncing up and down.

Holy shit! Mikey just brought one back. Seems he just pitched a rock at its forehead. There's blood all over its face. He's shaky and says he murdered it with the rock and then it thrashed around for a long time. He's feeling really guilty and at first said he didn't want any of it. But Leo said it would have died in vain if they don't do something with it. So he wants the pelt. They're keeping the meat from all four. So we'll be eating venison until next year. Raph might sell it to Johnny No Thumbs when we get back because we just realized that none of us have a freezer big enough to hold all of it.

Okay, just watched Deer One, aka Leo's deer, being butchered. It had to go first because its insides are exposed to the air and bacteria and everything. It wasn't that bad. Actually, kind of interesting. We all thought it was kind of cool, except for Mikey, who was still sitting with his deer. I think it lasted a lot longer than he's letting on. He said it flipped around like a fish for about fifteen minutes. And that's a long time to watch an animal die in and of itself. I asked why he didn't break its neck like Raph had done with his deer and he actually teared up because he hadn't thought of that. Stupid me.

Wait, how are we going to keep this stuff cold on the way home? Even if it fits in the van, which it probably won't, we'll have to keep it cool. I think I might need to go into town and rent a U-Haul trailer and get a bunch of ice to pack it. Raph has lots of money on him, so I'll make him go. Or else leave him here and take his money. I'm not sure yet.

Donny's walking around here looking like Sweeney Todd. He was working on Dear Three and I heard him muttering, "We have killed deer and are now men. Mwuahaha. Anybody want to keep a hoof?"

* * *

Dear Diary,

Made some calls and the rental places aren't open at night. So I'll have to leave Raph here. Wait. I need somebody to took hook it up. Ugh. I'll have to ask one of the workers. If not, we'll come back at night to hook it up, I guess. I'm a competent woman. I can hook up a U-Haul trailer all by myself.

* * *

Dear Diary,

That took forever. I have the trailer and ice now though. I had to get 20 rolls of aluminum foil too.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We're on the way back home now. We finally got everything packed. Donny got the deer wrapped. That took forever. I smell like a dead animal. Leo's driving. I'm going to just sit and enjoy the ride. We're all dead tired. No awful pun intended. Everybody seems to feel really good and accomplished. Donny is asleep in the backseat, lying down on it like a bed. That boy can sleep through anything.

How does Leo know how to pull a trailer? I asked him if there was anything he couldn't do and he looked all blushy and flattered. Then Raph helpfully pointed out that he doesn't know how to score with girls. He's not so much blushy now. More like teeth gnashed in repressed rage.

* * *

Dear Diary,

At the first rest stop. Raph checked on the meat and said that we forgot the deer head. I told him to go in the van and ask Donny, but he said that it would be pointless now and we should let him sleep.

Mikey had the walkie-talkie again and was talking to some person saying, "I had a great vacation. I murdered a deer and watched it as it suffered a brain hemorrhage for over an hour. How are you?"

Raph bought Mikey some ice cream. They're so cute sometimes. I've noticed that Raph tries to fix everything with food and presents.

Leo's in a really good mood, humming to himself. We're about to pack up and go. I guess Don's in the bathroom because he's not in the back seat anymore.

* * *

Dear Diary,

In the van now.

Back at the rest stop I knew that Leo had the other walkie-talkie in the bathroom because I heard Raph going, "Marco," into his walkie-talkie while he sat on the sidewalk and Leo was saying, "Polo," into the other one and then flushed a toilet. Those two are way too close.

"Tell him to get Don so we can leave," I told Raph.

"Did you hear that, Captain America? Princess wants to leave. Over."

"He's not in here. Are you sure he's not still in the van?"

Mikey must have picked up on something a lot quicker than we did because Raph laughed at Leo and said that maybe he'd accidentally flushed him down the toilet. Mikey ran to the U-Haul and looked inside and then looked in the van windows. He stood there looking up and down the abandoned parking lot.

"Well, tell him to look around because he's not out here," I said.

Raph threw the walk-talkie to me and went back to his ice cream.

"Yeah, are you sure he's not in the building? He's not out here."

I heard Leo walking around and doors opening and closing. "Well he's not in the ladies room. I don't know why he would be."

"We left him at the campground, guys," Mikey said. He instantly burst into the tears and jumped back in the van.

I could hear Leo pointlessly casing the inside of the rest stop. "Maybe he's out at the vending machines."

"Did you hear Mikey just now?" I asked him.

"No."

"He thinks we left Donny back at the camp site."

I looked around to see what Raph was doing and he was already dialing his cell phone. I heard "Vader's Theme" coming from inside the van. Then Mikey saying, "Hello, Raph. We're the worst brothers in the history of the world."

Leo was casually leaving the rest stop. It took a second for the horrible truth to penetrate his good mood. "I lost him," he said, handing me the other walkie-talkie. He instantly got into the driver's seat and would have driven off without me and Raph, if Raph hadn't screamed at him to stop.

What a nice way to end our vacation. Trying to convince Leo not to go 90mph the whole way back to the lake. Not working.


	17. Chapter 17

_What would a family vacation be without the inevitable family meltdown at the end? This is a faithful recreation of any vacation ever taken with teenagers, human or otherwise._

Dear Diary,

We're going back to the lake now. Nobody's talking. Leo's speeding.

* * *

Dear Diary,

It's kind of eerie. We just got back to the campsite and it's all empty. It was just full of us and our stuff a while ago. Leo was out of the van before it even came to a full stop. Raph and Mike were close behind. I hesitated, wondering if they were going to carry on and didn't want me to watch. But then I thought, "Screw what they want." I followed them out to the place where we'd gutted the deer.

Don was asleep and using his deer head for a pillow. I don't know why that was so repulsive to me. I do know why. It was repulsive. He'd propped it against a log and was curled up on his side, asleep. I could smell the mounds of deer guts that we'd piled up beyond the tree line.

Leo was smiling and relieved. Raph threw himself bodily on top of Don and he woke up screaming. Raph said, "Hey, you're not dead!" I guess that's how Raph hugs people and now I'm not too disappointed at not getting one. Mikey rolled Raph away and then helped Don up. He hugged him nicely.

I realized that the ride back would be full of drama when Don put the deer head in the trailer and then refused to come out, saying that he might as well ride in there since it wouldn't make any difference to anybody. Mikey, the family sweetheart, stood outside the trailer telling him stuff like we all love you a lot and I'll be stuck with Raph if you don't sit with me and stuff and then Raph, in a fit of… something… lumbered into the trailer, threw Donny over his shoulder and just tossed him into the van. He reminds me of a cave man sometimes.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo is still driving. Not going so fast now. Don refused to sit with us and is in the furthest seat back with a book and a flashlight. Mikey's really unhappy. He was really hoping Don with sit with him. Mikey's a cuddler and sort of attaches to people psychically and I think he wanted to use Don as a pillow. I'm sure that Mikey was the kind of kid who kissed everybody goodnight of his own volition. While adorable, it does make him rather codependent on the others and a little hard to take sometimes.

I'm in the passenger seat and Raph is behind me. I can't see him, but he's humming. He does that when he's tired. Sings to himself. It's something I wouldn't have expected him to do. Right now he's singing "My Bonnie Lies Over Ocean" in a relentless cycle. He sings pretty well, so it isn't that bad. If it was Leo singing, then I'd probably flip out after the 50th chorus. Mikey's sitting behind Leo and has his legs drawn up to his plastron, listening to somebody on the walkie-talkie. There seem to be people at the next rest stop so we have to plow on through to the next one and hope it's abandoned. We've had really good luck so far with that. I wasn't expecting it to hold out.

"Remember when we used to make you sing to us, Raph?" Mikey asked.

Raph didn't answer but I think he nodded or shrugged.

There was this tense feeling because even though Raph and Mike seemed kind of sad, they were talking and stuff. At least making vocal sounds anyway. Don was in the back giving us all the silent treatment and Leo wasn't talking either. I would have thought that he'd be happy that Don was back and safe and all.

After a while he said, "April, do you have any recurring dreams?"

"Yeah, I have that one where I'm drowning."

He didn't say anything for second. Not a long time, but long enough to make me look back out my window, thinking he was done. "I have this dream a lot."

His recurring dream. I could hear Raph shifting around behind me, listening. Mikey turned down the walkie-talkie.

"I'm in the lair and Raph comes up to me and he has a baby. I know that it's his although I've never seen it before and he doesn't explain where it came from. I feel really stupid too because I have this feeling like I should have known that he'd had it."

Raph's voice said, "Not to add unnecessary realism to this dream, but how do I have a baby without any female specimen in our species? And I don't have the goods to do it myself."

"I don't think it has a mother. Anyway, it's a turtle baby and it looks just like you. Then you hand it off to me and go back in your room. I realize that I'm supposed to go someplace but that I have to take the baby with me. So I go walking out into the tunnels. I get lost right away, like I've never seen these tunnels before. So I find a manhole and go topside."

"Sounds scary," Don said with unmistakable bitterness.

Leo huffed with this emotionally fussy and frustrated kind of sound that I've never heard from him before. Then he stopped the van on the side of the road.

"What are we doing?" Mikey asked.

Leo turned around so that he could see Donny and speak directly to him. "I get topside and then I realize that there's something coming behind me and so I set the baby down on the ground. I turn around and there's a tornado on the skyline. I panic because I need to get the baby somewhere safe and when I turn back around to pick it up, it's gone. I lose the baby. It's not always Raph's baby. Sometimes it's Mike's. Sometimes it's yours."

I turned around to see what Raph was doing. He was staring at Leo and I thought he would be sorry for him, but he looked mad. Like Leo was doing something really upsetting. "Is this really the time?" he asked.

Mikey was sniffing again, about to wail. I didn't know what Don was doing. Leo was blindly trying to stick the key back in the ignition, but missed a few times because he was either teared up or shaking with emotion. I had this feeling like I was about to see something that I shouldn't. Like I should get out and walk away until they were finished.

"You know," Don said. This was it. He was going to fire the emotional breakdown starting gun. "I'd feel a lot worse for you and you're parental incompetence dream if I didn't know that you missed the deer head before me. Maybe that's really a wish-fulfillment dream. I'm sure you're life would be a lot easier if we weren't around."

Raph turned all the way around and said in his loudest voice, "WHY DON'T YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Leo turned the key and started the van, but just sat there.

Mikey put on a pair of headphones to drown them out.

I don't think I've heard Donny yelling before. He doesn't usually need to yell. He can say really mean stuff sometimes and uses his bigger brain to his advantage against them in fights. "WHY AM I THE ONE YOU'RE ALWAYS FORGETTING? MAYBE YOU'RE NOT FORGETTING AT ALL!"

Leo turned the van off again.

Raph said, or screamed more like, "MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE LET YOU RIDE IN THE TRAILER!"

"DON'T TAG TEAM AGAINST ME! THIS ISN'T ANY OF YOUR BUSINESS, RAPH!"

"I'LL GET INVOLVED IN WHATEVER I WANT!"

Leo said, "You have to make everything worse don't you!"

"THIS IS TOO MY BUSINESS! I'M THE ONLY ONE YOU WOULD TALK TO ABOUT IT! AND NOW IT'S NONE OFMY BUSINESS!"

Don threw his book at the back of Raph's head. "This is a prime example of how you have to make everything about you! And you too, Mr. Perfect! I'm the one who was sitting out there by the lake for three hours by myself and we're sitting here having true confessions about your daddy complex. Well, you're released from your responsibility from me if you think it's that much of a burden."

"You can't just say that," Raph said. He was really quiet and sad all of a sudden. "It's up to sensei, remember."

"Yeah, I remember," Don said. "And I'm sure you remember too when you're sitting around all the time wondering why you're not the leader."

That was it. "Don, you shut up or you can walk home," I said. It didn't feel good telling him off because we always get along so well, but he was getting pretty out of line and off track. I could understand that he was really upset and all, but still. "Here, let me drive," I said to Leo. I wanted to get them all back to the lair as soon as possible. Or else to a rest stop so that they could all get away from each other for a while. We awkwardly switched seats by climbing over each other because cars were coming in the oncoming lanes and we couldn't get out.

So I got on the road again and as soon as the tires hit the pavement Leo said, "I hope you don't think that I'm happy about losing you. My only goal in life is to keep you guys safe. Not that I care particularly about your personal safety, but I've been given a task by Master Splinter and I don't intend to fail, no matter how badly you idiots want to get killed."

I could see this momentary look of real hurt in Raph's face. Don just scoffed loudly. I think he was doing it for dramatic effect.

They didn't yell at each other anymore, but I wish they had because it was that kind of really tense silence after a family fight where everybody's crying and trying not to look at each other. And they couldn't just beat the crap out of each other and call it done because they were stuck in the van with me.

After about twenty minutes Mikey took off his headphones and said, "Is the fight over now?"

* * *

Dear Diary,

Long, tense ride home. The other rest stop was full too so we had to keep going. We had the radio playing so that we wouldn't notice the profound lack of talking so much and they kept playing really sad music like Coldplay, one of those little blond country singers who are always writing about breakups, "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton, and some weepy song by The Carpenters. It was so perfectly depressing that it was hilarious. Finally, just before we were in danger of turning into one of those sappy music montages like on the end of an episode of "Grey's Anatomy," Leo changed it to this Tejano channel that only plays Mariachi music that sounded like techno remixes of The Mexican Hat Dance. Then they kept playing Mariachi love ballads, which was even more perfect. Raph said, "The gods of music fight against us."

I turned the radio off and said, "Why don't you entertain us with a song. I've never heard you sing properly. Do any of the rest of you sing?"

Leo immediately yelled, "No!"

Mikey said, "Don can sing a little."

Don was asleep and probably having dreams that he was wandering around lost. Raph tried to sing to along to a song on the Tejano channel, which made us all laugh. I don't know why he was in such a good mood. Leo was sort of balled up in his seat, watching the dreary skyline and, you know, other clichéd brooding crap. So Raph joked his way out of singing for us. I want to get Donny to sing karaoke sometime. I think I'd have to hold a gun to Raph's head to get him to do it. Or get him extremely wasted. That's a possibility. I'll have to write that down. But if he's really drunk then he won't sing very well. I'll think of something.

Well, I hope Leo and Don will be okay. I halfway don't really care. I'm too tired. I can only take so much teenage drama and then I shut down. How am I going to return this U-Haul and where are we going to put all this venison? I just dumped them back at the lair without saying much and now I'm going home to shower. Unsurprisingly, Raph took off as soon as he got home. Big surprise. Leo went to Splinter and apologized for his failure as a son and brother and student and to beg forgiveness. Mikey started unpacking the meat and piling it on the kitchen table and Donny went right to his bedroom and locked the door.


	18. Chapter 18

_I share the pathological fear of bugs, and so, must give Raph some sympathy. I can't even visualize a cockroach without shuddering all over and wanting to brush myself off. Also wondering if April could ever have a relationship with a guy who isn't Casey. Would that even be possible?_

Dear Diary,

Well, everything went okay after we got back. Don called me the next day and said that the taxidermy of the deer head was well under way and Leo wants him to pose it in an attack pose, with its teeth bared. Mikey wants it to smile. He said that Raph came back a few hours later with a small freezer and "Happy birthday Don" written on the lid in permanent marker. It's just big enough to store the meat.

* * *

Dear Diary,

This is bad and weird. I woke up in the middle of the night and found Raph in bed with me. It's like a really perverse nightmare. I didn't try to wake him up because last time I did that, he knocked me out. So I just let him sleep. He's in the kitchen now and is in no mood to explain what's going on.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo jumped in the window a while ago to claim Raph and drag him back to the lair. From what I understand, last night Don and Raph switched bedrooms and so now Raph and Mikey share a room and Leo and Donny share a room. And late last night, Raph had woken up in a panic attack of unspecified intensity because he was sure that he'd felt cockroaches crawling on him.

"I couldn't find any roaches in there," Leo said to Raph's back, as he flipped sausage on the stove for our breakfast. "I bet that you just imagined that whole thing."

Raph turned around and punched Leo right in the face. Leo just spat out a little blood onto my floor and then continued like nothing had happened. "I'd think you would be happy about that. It would mean that the room's safe."

"I didn't imagine it. They were… all over…" his whole body shuddered and he unnecessarily flipped the sausage again to occupy himself.

"Are you staying here then until the threat has passed?" I asked. I wasn't too happy about an angsty and also paranoid Raph sleeping in my bed every night for a week. I also have a date tomorrow night and kind of want him out of my bed.

He shrugged and kept looking at the sausages as they spattered.

"Would that be okay?" Leo asked. "I don't want to put you out or anything."

"No that's okay. We can hang out and do some fun stuff." Yeah right. He's going to mope around the whole time.

"Thanks." Leo looked understandably dubious about the fun.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just had another movie night. Went badly. Mikey made like he was putting in "The Dirty Dozen," which is one of Raph's favorites, and put in "Joe's Apartment" instead, which is about singing, dancing cockroaches. Wow. He lost it and broke a lamp on the floor. He just picked it up and smashed it. He said later that it was the only way to avoid breaking Mike's skull instead. Then he ran straight into the bathroom to take a shower. He keeps doing that lately. Don said that it has something to do with washing off the "crawly" feeling.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just got back from my date with Trevor. He's perfect. He's so hot. He held the door for me and oh he's so hot. And nice. And he's a pediatrician!

When I got home, I saw that the bedroom door was closed and I knew that Raph was in there asleep. I was pretty let down and thought about just shoving Trevor on the couch and taking him then and there, but it felt really wrong with Raph about ten feet away. So I came up with an excuse to get rid of Trevor, which almost hurt physically, and went into the bedroom.

There was my Raph, sitting up in bed, perfectly awake. "Where've you been?"

"On a date." I threw my shoes into the closet.

"Get lucky?" He rubbed his eyes. I noticed that Mikey's teddy bear was hidden under the blankets.

"No. How would I get lucky when I already have a man in my bed? Is that Mr. Bear?"

He pulled him out and held him up by the ear as if he were contaminated. "Yeah, Mike brought him over."

To make up for the "Joe's Apartment" incident, no doubt. I was about to drop my dress in front of him and then said, "Shut your eyes."

I looked back to make sure that he obeyed. He looked like a big green five year old with his eyes shut, holding a teddy bear. I got into my pajamas and got into bed without any words exchanged. Then my phone beeped to tell me that I had a text message. I could feel him moving around, listening to the sound. He does that now whenever he hears any beepy, buzzy sound. I looked at my phone. It was a text from Trevor that said, "Miss u already." I got all giggly.

"What?"

"Trevor misses me. He's so sweet."

Raph made a gagging sound.

Then I sat bolt upright in horrified realization. How am I going to explain them to Trevor?

* * *

Dear Diary,

Didn't have a good night. He woke up in a full-fledged bug panic. I heard this loud male voice and at first I couldn't remember who was with me and just laid there. My first thought was of Trevor and then I remembered that I'd sent him home. Then I realized it was Raph. But I was in bed alone. He was on the floor next to his side of the bed, leaning against the wall, hyperventilating.

I didn't know what to do. I was too afraid to go near him. So I just watched.

"You okay?" I asked. It felt like a really dumb question because obviously he wasn't.

"Don't touch me," he managed to wheeze.

"Do you need me to do anything?"

I just had to wait until he'd gone through the full cycle. He hyperventilated until he couldn't breathe and then gagged and choked and I couldn't do anything about it. He lay back against the wall for over ten minutes, just sweating and breathing really hard, rubbing his palms on the carpet. It was really hard to watch. After he calmed down, he climbed back on the bed. I don't think he slept much. He looked really tired this morning.

I don't know how much longer I can keep him here like this. I think I like it better when he screams, hits somebody and then takes off.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's gone now. I don't know where he went.

Having fun looking at old pictures. I found the memory card from the digital camera I used to use. Mikey broke it a few months ago. I looked at the pictures just now. I don't remember half of them.

Leo brought over a delegation of turtles to beg forgiveness for Raph's anxiety attacks and how they're ruining my sex life. Well, he didn't really say that, but that's what it felt like he should say.

I don't really want to talk about it and I don't think Raph wants me to tell them about last night's episode, so instead I broke out the pictures on my computer so that I could ask them what we doing when they were taken.

"What's going on in this picture?" I asked Don.

"You're sitting on Leo's lap," he said, like I must be blind.

"I can see that. Why do we both look so mad?"

Leo was looking in the refrigerator. "Mikey spilled all that oil in your van, remember?"

Yeah, I remember that. I still look at the greasy oil stain and shake my head every day.

I flipped to the next picture. A very respectable picture of the leader of the Hamato clan. He had taken a picture of his own face while he crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

"I'm saving that and using it as my desktop wallpaper," Don said.

Next were a few artsy-fartsy shots of a potted plant and a draped table cloth. "I assume you took these, Mike," I said.

"Yeah, I need to get some fill lights. They're all dark."

Then a few pictures of the NYU campus and some people that I hung around with for a few weeks until Donny was kidnapped and I had to man the battle station in his place. I couldn't find the time to hang out with them again for some reason.

"Ah, this is my favorite," I said as Don flipped to the last picture. It was a candid still life shot and it makes me laugh every time I see it. All four of them are in my living room. Leo and Raph are standing in the middle of the room and Leo has his hand on Raph's arm and looks like he's explaining something. Raph's smirking at whatever he's saying. Mikey's having a tantrum in the background. I think he was yelling at me because he thought I'd scratched his "Die Hard" DVD. Don is just chilling in an armchair, observing the others. He's wearing a pink feather boa that I used one Halloween. I guess they're not being very funny, but it still makes me laugh. "Now that's going up on my desktop wallpaper," I said.

"There are a few more," Don said.

I hadn't gotten through all of them, I guess. The next was a close up of a bloody wound. "Ugh, who took this?" I asked. "It's one of you guys. I don't know anybody else with green skin."

"Probably Raph," Leo said. "He got that winch hook in his arm that time and said it was such a manly wound that it needed to be documented."

"He's something else, isn't he?" I said to myself.

The last was another artsy-fartsy shot that Mike had taken. It was of Raph lounging in one of my windowsills. You could see the night skyline behind him. "I posed him for that," Mikey said proudly. "It wasn't hard. He doesn't like looking at the camera and smiling anyway."

"It's pretty good, Mike," Leo said. "You should put that on the computer at home instead of that stupid one of me."

"I want that picture of you sitting on Leo's lap and making that awful face," Don said. "That's pretty funny."

I felt a tap on my back and turned around. Somebody came from the opposite direction and kissed me on the cheek. It was Raph. "Where were you all day?" I asked, not tremendously surprised by his surprise entrance. The others didn't even take notice of his presence. I suppose that they all knew he was there long before I did.

"What are we all looking at?" he asked. "Oh, I actually look pretty good in that picture."

"Weren't you guys going to go patrolling or do something ninja oriented tonight?" I asked, sort of desperate to get rid of Raph.

"Nah, we're going to go home and play Risk," Mikey said. "It's an epic battle of the ages. I bet Leo that if I win, I'll wash all the dishes on his nights for a month. But it doesn't really matter because Don's going to win and then point at us and go, 'I own you!'"

"I'm just going to stick around here, if that's okay," Raph said. Great, another night together.

I ground my teeth together and said, "That's fine, Raph. Leo, Can I have a word with you?"

Leo followed me into the bedroom and I shut the door. I'm sure that Raph knew something was up, but I didn't really care.

"Take him home!" I said.

"I thought you guys were going to have fun," he said. He was nearly laughing at me.

"Don't get me I wrong. I love him to death, but I'm not thrilled with him having anxiety attacks all over the place. It's making me nervous now and I'm not even afraid of bugs. I have a feeling that this has something to do with some other thing that he's nervous about."

"Nah, he does it for attention," Leo said. He was starting back towards the door. I threw myself in front of it. I was determined to get this point across.

"Are you being stupid on purpose? You've never noticed that he takes all his everyday anxiety and mashes it down into that little compartment where his bug phobia lives?"

He sat on my bed and shrugged. "What can I do about it?"

"Talk to him."

He laughed outright. "We just have to wait until he gets over whatever it is that he's worried about."

"Get him out of here! I haven't had sex in over a year!" I yelled in a fit of irrational desperation.

He scratched the top of his head and said, "I don't really know what I'm supposed to do about that. And also, I have 15 years on you, so I don't feel very sorry for you."

He huffed out of the room.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Tonight I sat on the couch in my pajamas while Raph watched "Cops" and I talked on the phone with Trevor for two hours. Most of my end of the conversation went like, "Yes you are, yes you are, yes you are…" followed by giggling and adolescent hair-twirling.

Raph kept grumbling and shifting back and forth. He would turn the volume up on the TV and then I would turn it back down. I was shocked out of my flirtation when I heard Raph yelp like he'd just sat on a tack. I looked over at him and saw that he had his eyes shut tight. I looked at the TV. It was a close up of a cockroach's face. Some ad for an exterminator.

"What was that?" Trevor asked me.

"That was my brother… he… fell… I have to go." I hung up on him. "Honey, are you okay?"

He was scratching on his plastron again. "I have to take a shower," he said, jumping over the back of the couch.

I called Trevor back to apologize. He said he didn't know that I had a brother. I had to make up an elaborate story about how my parents had adopted four teenage foster sons and that one of them was having a psychotic breakdown and had come to live with me. No big deal. So I said goodbye to him as Raph came out of the shower.

"What is up with you?" I asked. I had had enough. I was through. He was leaving tonight. I didn't care if he was eaten by a man-sized cockroach on the way home. My bed would be my own tonight.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? Really? You saw a bug…" I saw his face twitch at the mention of the word. "…on TV and had to go decontaminate yourself. That's not normal for anybody. Especially you. What is it about bugs that scare you so much?"

"I… ugh… I can't…" He shifted back and forth from one foot to the other.

"…dance the Bolero? Wear white after Labor Day? What?"

"…fight… bugs…"

I laughed so hard that I fell off the couch. When I realized that he was probably furious with me, I looked around and saw that he was sitting on the floor where he'd been standing, laughing so hard that his eyes were watering. "Butch, come here." He sat next to me on the floor, leaning against the couch. "Just go home and beat the shit out of Leo." He broke out laughing again and I had to slap him on the arm to get his attention again. I wiped my eyes dry as I tried to regain control. "Seriously, whatever your problem is, if it's with him, because it usually is, just go home and beat him up and then you'll both apologize and get over it. That's the way you usually handle things and I have to say that it's infinitely better. This displacement crap isn't healthy and to tell the truth, I don't really enjoy sleeping with you all that much."

He was actually smiling now and said, "Yeah, I've noticed that you're stepping out on me, you big whore."

"Oh, really?" I elbowed him in the side.

So I sent him home feeling a lot better about things.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just got an angry voicemail from my Leo. Raph went home and pummeled him out of nowhere. Turns out Raph was mad about something that Leo had said to him in the van on the way back from the Lake about not caring if they all got killed because it was just his job to keep them alive. But he didn't remember that Leo had said it until he was on his way home from my place. Like he was unconsciously mad? I don't even remember Leo saying that. Funny.


	19. Chapter 19

_I realize that it's been a while since the little reprobates wrote in her diary. I have to say that I agree with Mike, making Leo uncomfortable is really funny._

Dear April's Diary,

I stole April's diary and took it home with me to the lair, so this could very well be my last words written upon this earth. I, Michelangelo Hamato, promise not to say anything too embarrassing about anybody. Who am I kidding? That's the fun of keeping a diary.

Yesterday we were in the dojo all day. Sensei was testing us for speed. And guess who was the quickest? It rhymes with Shmichelangelo.

I share a room with Raph now. I like it. I liked sharing with Don too, but Don spends all his time calibrating bomb detonators and junk. Raph's a one-man-band of destruction. He spent a couple of days at April's because he had that dream about the cockroaches again. I feel bad for him. He's so brave most of the time. He left Mr. Bear at April's and I'm mad about that. I'll write what I can remember from last night.

I asked him, "Can we push our beds together?"

He was already in bed and faked snoring.

"I know you're awake. Can we push our beds together?"

"Why?"

"I missed you." That was true, but it was an exaggeration. I got to play "Halo 2" all night for three days without him.

"Go for it. If you piss on me, I promise to murder you tomorrow."

I was really happy. I made a path through the junk on the floor between our beds and pushed mine across the room against his bed. He wasn't in a talking mood tonight. I like talking to him. He's so colorful. "Do you think April's having sex right now?"

"Yeah, probably," he said.

"Did you have fun over there?"

I thought he was going to ignore me, but he rolled over and faced me. "Well, not really. She was real pissed that I was there."

"Does April like you?" I wondered what he would say. I can't ask him if he likes April. He'd just punch me.

"She likes all of us."

He didn't look embarrassed, hit me or ignore the question. I guess he's not in love with her after all. When I heard that he was sleeping in her bed with her, it gave me the creeps. So I'm glad.

There was a big thump in Leo and Don's room and I could hear Donny yelling, "Don't move that. I told you that's where I keep the pure sodium. Do you want to blow us into the next bedroom?"

"What did you do while I was gone?" Raph asked. He just ignores what they do in the next room unless they're yelling about us. "What happened on "The Puerile and the Fidgety"?"

"Turns out that Aubree is really Eva. I think Eva really has a sister named Aubree, but they got a new actress to play Eva and they're saying that she had plastic surgery to look like her sister so that she could win Ford back."

"Huh. I can see how having extensive reconstructive surgery would be a big turn on. Guess it'll save the show some money in the future."

"How?" I knew, but I like listening to him explaining things.

"Because when they want to introduce Aubree, they won't need to hire a new actress. I think you stirred up the fruit flies when you moved the bed. Where's the blanket?"

"Leo sent it to April to get washed. He said that it looked like somebody gave birth in your bed sheets."

"Great. Just great."

I decided to go to sleep and to pee on him some other night when he wasn't being nice to me. It's funny. I woke up in the morning and he was right in front of my face. I don't travel in my sleep, so I think he must have moved really close after I was asleep. I should be nice to him today.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

Maybe April likes Don. She did nearly jizz her pants when he gave her that t-shirt with the periodic table of the elements on it. I can see it now. Two nerds bound by their unusually large cranial capacity, but separated by their differing chromosome counts. They do talk on the phone a lot. Maybe they're whispering love poems in binary language. "I 1010001110101 you."

But there was that time that she fell all over Raph when she found him sitting at her kitchen table crying. I know girls are all about the sensitive bad boy thing. I don't know why, but they are on TV. Girls seem to get turned on by guys who are always dirty and scowling and covered in sexy wounds. Raph's covered in scars, but I wouldn't call any of them sexy. Maybe you have to be a girl to appreciate them. Anyway, she didn't know that he'd just been reading the sports page and found out that he'd lost $5,000 betting on a horse. I'd cry too.

If she's in love with anybody, it's Leo. I remember her saying that he reminds her of some guy she liked when she was a teenager. Plus he's all gallant and perfect and stuff. I guess it would be hard for girls not to crush on him, turtle or human or whatever. But here's a newsflash, ladies. He isn't perfect. His feet smell like two dead animals. He cries when we watched "Babe." He's such a big girl. And he never puts the condiments back in the fridge. We always have runny, warm ketchup and it's all his fault.

I think she should crush on me. I'm much prettier. Man, am I bored. I'm going to write a story about an elf.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

April came over today and she was like, "Trevor did this… Trevor did that… Isn't Trevor perfect…?" You'd think we should bow down and worship the guy. I told her that Leo's perfect and we all hate him. Leo said that we're just jealous of his awesomeness.

Then I decided to find out if she got laid last night. So I said, "When are you due?"

"Excuse me?" She dropped her phone on the floor.

"Due." I wasn't going to give her inch. She was really squirming.

Then Raph got in on it and asked if she would name her son after him. He said that Trevor probably wouldn't like her naming their son after another man, but he had a claim to it since he slept with her first.

Then Leo went all chivalry on us and told us that it wasn't any of our business. Don asked her to help calibrate the all important detonators and then she yelled at him for crossing wires and almost blowing us up. Come to think of it, we never really found out if she slept with the guy.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

It's been two weeks. I can't believe she hasn't figured out that I have her diary. She's looked everywhere. She even searched the lair. She didn't search the bedrooms and I've been keeping it under the mattress. There's a really bad smell in here. Maybe we should look for it. I bet it's that TV dinner that Raph had a few days ago. Beware, bad smell. We shall destroy thee.

Shit. I lost one of my chucks. False alarm. It's in the desk drawer.

I played Fable again and I was trying to work that exploit where you dig near the boasting platform and then more villagers show up and you can force push them and get experience points for it. But it didn't work. I think we have an updated version. Don says that it's a waste of time and I should just do the hero exploit in the arena. Just save the hero's stats when he gets to the end of the tournament and reload it from the last save. But I hate playing the arena thing. It's so boring.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

Leo was following April's boyfriend, the Miraculous Trevor, and found out that he's also the Cheating Scuzzbucket Trevor. He was totally making out with some skanky blond.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

The owner of this diary has been warned of previously mentioned cheating and has chosen to blindly follow wherever Cheating Scuzzbucket Trevor leads. She didn't believe Leo and gave him a really idiotic speech, saying he's jealous of their love. It is so epic and pure. I think she must be concussed. Leo keeps walking around the lair in a fugue state, stopping to go, "Jealous?"

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

Sigh. Grumble. Bangs head against desk. Hey, Raph bought me some candy! He's so nice to me.

Oh, yeah. Bad stuff. April found out that her man really was cheating on her. So we went over to her apartment and she was talking in this really high pitched voice about how she was glad he was gone and could concentrate on her school, which he really hates, by the way. Good idea, girl. Put your energy into something you hate. Good use of your time.

Raph wanted to watch a movie because he's a heartless bastard and didn't notice that she was approaching hysterics. He thought she was being sincere. He put in some horror movie about people who lived in a glass house with a bunch of ghosts and the ghosts kept killing people for some reason. There was a naked dead girl in a bathtub. I don't know. I wonder if directors just go, "We need a naked girl in this scene!" just because they can. April was sitting next to Leo on the couch and she just busted out crying hysterically. I almost jumped out of my shell.

So she spent about two hours curled up in Leo's lap, hugging him around his chest and leaking fluids all over his plastron. He was pretty freaked out. The closest he's ever been to a girl was when that dead chick fell off the fire escape and landed on him. But he took it like a man. He kept looking at Raph and mouthing stuff like, "Help me!" and, "Do something!"

Don really helped. For somebody so smart he can sure be an idiot sometimes. He just went into that stuff about how love is a biological need to have babies and that Trevor has a natural need to spread his seed as far as he can.

"Well, that might be an excuse when they were inventing the wheel and fire and stuff," she said. Boy, I'd hide the family jewels, if I were Trevor. "But we live in the modern real world and you can't just do whatever you feel like just because of a biological drive. He was…"

"…tilling your soil?" Raph asked. He was leaning back in his chair, like he thought she would explode.

"And my soil should be enough! What's wrong with me? We were at it every night for almost two weeks! He needed more? A man who needs it from two girls must be a sex addict? Right?" She looked up at poor Leo and expected an answer. He sat there and then raised his shoulders in a half shrug. Leo's funniest when he isn't trying to be, you know.

Raph decided to break up the awkward talk and said, "It doesn't matter what's wrong with him. He cheated and now you're rid of him. Be glad. Let's celebrate."

He meant get drunk.

"I don't think we have any hooch here," I said. "I think I can whip together a cake." I'd wanted cake all day. It was a good excuse to make some.

April was still sobbing against Leo's chest. She had her legs in his lap and he had his arms halfway in the air, like he didn't know where to put them. He looked kind of like he was being held at gunpoint. "Celebrate?" she said. "What do I have to celebrate? This is so cruel. I finally meet a good guy and he gets me all used to orgasms again…"

Leo put his hands over his ears.

"…and then he leaves."

Raph shooed Leo away to give him a reprieve. Leo scurried into the kitchen and I could see him washing off his plastron with the dishtowel.

She leaned against his arm, but didn't wrap herself around him. I think the fact that Raph had intervened made her realize that she was making us all feel really awkward.

Don said, "I don't doubt that it's bad, but you have to remember that we're only 16 and 15. I know that you'd like us to give you advice and support and we try but… I don't really know what to tell you."

He reads my mind sometimes.

She looked around at us all like she just remembered that we were there. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that. Leo, I'm sorry. Where are you?"

He came back from the kitchen and made sure to sit as far away from her as he could manage without looking rude. More unintentional Leo hilarity. I swear he's the funniest guy I know and he isn't even trying.

Before we went home Raph went into her bedroom to look for her bathrobe and he came rushing out, looking like he was all in a panic and said, "Leo, come quick! There's something wrong with the bed!"

"What?" Leo was kind of hiding in the corner.

He jumped up and was halfway across the room when Raph goes, "The bed. It has blankets on it!"

* * *

Dear Diary,

I got my diary back. The family clepto took it and hid it in his room. It occurred to me that I hadn't searched their bedrooms.

First, I looked in Leo and Don's room. It's really neat and clean, but it's disturbing because there are bomb parts all over the place. I know he has a lab, but he still keeps tissue samples and explosives in the bedroom. Guess he wants them close by.

I went into Mike and Raph's room next. It looks like the city dump. There's garbage ankle deep on the floor and I tripped over a punching bag that was buried under the trash. Raph was kind of pissed because I stirred up the fruit fly farm that they're breeding. I told them that it smells like something died in there.

What can I say about the other night? Embarrassed? Humiliated? Really annoyed that Mikey thinks I'm in love with all of his brothers?

I left him a voicemail message today, gushing that I'm in love with him and that we need to elope and stuff. He hasn't answered back, so I'm hoping he gets my drift. I'm going to have to apologize to Leo. I hope I didn't traumatize him too badly.

Maybe I'm just not meant to have anybody. Just my four adopted brothers. That's really depressing.


	20. Chapter 20

_I know this may be the second chapter in a day, but they're so much fun and so quick that they're addictive. Also, I'm nervous about a job interview tomorrow and can't settle down to do anything else. I picked this song for Raph because it seemed the least emo and also because I grew up loving it. And I still love it. Even though I'm afraid of Scott Weiland. Just sitting around today wondering what Raph is like when he's happy. He can't be in a rage or a fit all the time. I realize that it kind of drops off in medias res, but I still have more plans for the night and it's getting longer than I anticipated._

Dear Diary,

I talked to Donny on the phone just now and he asked me if I was in love with Mikey. He was laughing while he said it, so I assume that he knows it was a joke.

"Apparently, I'm in love with all four of you guys. Is he weird about it?"

"No, he's fine. Do you want to apologize or something?" I could hear him clicking on a keyboard.

"Not if he's fine. But what about Leo?"

There was a pause as Don drew out, "Yeeeeahh." Either he was checking to see if said brother was listening or else to think of something tactful to say. "I don't think he knows what to make of it. We're all being kind of quiet about it. Even Raph."

"Well, I'll make amends. I don't really know what to apologize for."

"You kind of embarrassed him."

I decided that if I were going to grovel and beg for forgiveness then I'd do it up properly. I know he's big on formality and ritual, so I called Splinter to ask for permission for Leo come over alone so that I could talk to him. Probably a good move anyway because otherwise somebody else would probably be listening in at the window. I got slightly dressed up and he knocked politely at the door at the exact minute that I had prescribed.

He looked like he was going to be sick. So I told him to sit down and said, "I want to apologize for what I said. I didn't realize at the time that it made you uncomfortable. And I want to apologize for… you know… the awkward cuddling and all…"

"Thank you. I accept your apology." Formal. That's my boy. He was sitting across from me, as straight as a pin.

"So are we good?"

"It would do you good in the future not to ask us for romantic advice. All we know we learned from soap operas."

I tried not to laugh because I think he was trying to give a serious warning. "Well, I'm not apologizing to Mikey because he doesn't deserve it. The little imp. I made you dinner. Do you want some?"

"Oh, yes please." He was still fairly prim through the rest of the evening. It was kind of like being on a date with my grandmother.

As soon as he left, Raph and Mike gate-crashed and jumped in the window, demanding to know how it went. I told them both to just go home and ask him.

"He won't talk about it. He'll say it isn't gentlemanly," Mikey said, taking Leo's leftover spaghetti for himself.

"How are you doing?" Raph asked. He had a new batch of scratches across his plastron.

"Forget me. How are you doing?"

"Ah, I'm fine. Got any Bactine?" He went into the bathroom to hunt for disinfectant.

"Yeah, I guess I'm okay. I'm going to check my Facebook for a minute. If I laugh for no reason, it's not at you."

Mikey stood behind my chair at the computer and watched over my shoulder. I was scrolling through and saw right away that Trevor was still one of my Facebook friends. Mike caught it too and said, "You should defriend that guy."

I clicked on his profile, trying to figure out how to get rid of him. I've never defreinded anybody before and couldn't figure out where to go. Then I saw that he was listed as being in a relationship. "Funny. That wasn't there yesterday," I said. I bit my lip and tried not to cry again. This was stupid. I didn't want to ruin another evening with them crying.

"Imogen Vandersloot?" Mikey said. "That's a name?"

So we spent a half an hour sitting around. I had my head in Mikey's lap and let him pet me while I listened to that really sad Paramore song over and over. Raph said, "This song makes me want to kill myself. Shirley Manson could kick that girl's ass."

The CD spun around to play the song again. Imogen Vandersloot. I hope she has crabs.

Raph got up and left the room and I wondered vaguely if he had decided to ditch me. But he came back with the guitar. He turned off the CD, sat down and played a few chords. He offered the guitar to Mike. "Here, you play."

Mike pushed me off his lap and took the guitar. He fumbled around until he found a tune that he liked.

"Is this the guitar game?" I asked. I was going to clean the kitchen if it was.

"That's 'It's Raining Men' by The Weather Girls," Raph said, smirking at Mike. "Nice try."

Mike tried another tune.

"Too high."

Mike regrouped and tried again.

I was pretty confused. "What are you guys doing?"

"You missed your cue," Mike muttered to Raph.

Mikey started over again and I got up to go fill the dishwasher. I hadn't changed out of my pajamas all day long and Mike's petting had left my hair looking like a big red rat's nest. But we all love Splinter, so maybe that's not too bad.

Then I heard singing and I remember looking around thinking, "Who's singing in the next apartment? That's really loud if I can hear it all the way in here."

Raph was singing along with the song that Mike was playing. It was a song about a dog that smells girls. Not as nice as Paramore, but I wouldn't expect him to sing anything that would be considered a love song, I guess. He's actually pretty good. I watched them and I think he had his eyes shut the whole time.

They finished and I clapped. "Do you do that often?"

"We used to do it all the time," Mikey said, handing the guitar back to Raph, who picked around on the strings experimentally. I think he was trying to block out the praise. "Well, me, Raph and Donny did. We never let Leo play."

"How'd you guys learn to play? I mean, you guys play a little piano too right?"

Mike joined me in the kitchen and almost instantaneously had the dishwasher full and going. "We found a bunch of music junk in the dumpster behind a music store. They threw out their old inventory. We didn't have video games at the time. We had some, but they were really old. And we had a computer, but Don hadn't figured how to hook up to the internet. So it was pretty boring. We have video games and internet now and it's still kind of boring."

"I'm really surprised by…" I motioned out towards Raph, who was still banging absently on the guitar.

"Yeah, that's his only hidden talent," Mikey said, shrugging it off. "Well, he does laundry real good. But other than that…"

That made me laugh. "So he can only fight, sing and do laundry?"

"Yeah, we only need him around to kill things, sing lullabies and wash our bedding."

I signaled Mikey to be quiet because the guitar had stopped playing. Raph wandered into the kitchen. "You guys talking about me?"

"No!" we both lied. Really obviously.

"I'm feeling really good about today," Raph said out of nowhere. He was looking up at the ceiling, like he was reading something. "I have a feeling that it's a good day. I think I'll be sixteen today."

"Do you mean today or tomorrow?" I asked. I looked at the clock. "Because there's only about seven hours left of today."

Mikey was looking in the phone book. I thought he was ordering pizza.

"Why are you in such a good mood? Did you accidentally take happy pills again?"

"I don't know why everybody thinks I'm always mad all the time. I'm a really happy person, you know. I'm satisfied with my life about 90% of the time."

"It's that other ten percent, Butch," Mikey said, listening into his cell phone. "It more than makes up for that 90% happiness rating. Hello, is this Trevor Sterling?"

My eyes opened as far as they would go. Raph turned around and watched Mike, mildly amused.

"Hello, ma'am. I'm Jason from the Brooklyn Free Clinic and I have Mr. Sterling's test results back. May I ask who this is? Oh, I'm not able to release the results to anybody but Mr. Sterling, but I have a message to relay to him from Dr. Shepherd. The rash should subside in 7-10 days if he keeps applying the cream. And he is to abstain until the regimen has run its course. Have a good day, ma'am." Mike hung up.

I jumped up in down in a rage. Raph slapped him on the back. "Was that his girlfriend? Good going, man!"

"Oh, he's a doctor. He'll see through that right away!" I said.

"It doesn't matter if he sees through it. It matters that she won't." Mikey helped himself to some cookies and happily sat at the kitchen table.

"Like I said," Raph resumed, ignoring my still fuming rage. "I have a good feeling about today. Let's have my birthday."

"That's a great idea," Mikey said, his mouth full of cookie. "What do you have in mind?"

I sat down heavily at the table. "I know. Let's kill Mikey."

Raph was looking shifty. "I've always wondered what it's like to drive an Astin Martin DB9. A 2010 model."

"Yeah," Mike said, cottoning on. "Me too."

"Huh? Trevor drives a new Astin Martin," I said stupidly.

I don't know what we're going to do. I think they're going to take off and joyride around in Trevor's car without me.

* * *

Dear Diary,

It was so cool! I forced them to take me with them because I didn't want them to drive it off a bridge or anything and we had to go to Trevor's house and Mikey hotwired his car and then we cruised around.

Raph drove and we were listening to Li'l Jon and feeling really badass. We were out by the abandoned docks, driving around, grooving to rap music with the top down on the car. We felt badass until Raph thought a bug flew in his face and he squealed and nearly crashed the car.

"This is such a nice car," Mikey said. He was hand-surfing on the air as we cruised. I was lounging in the backseat. "I wonder how much the rims are worth."

"Want to find out?" I said. I was really getting into this revenge business.

"Now you're thinking," Raph said. "I think this will be a really good birthday. I have a good feeling about it."

_I __need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night._

"That's Dudley Do-Right," Raph said. He threw his phone at Mike. "You talk to him."

_He's gotta be strong_

_And he's gotta be fast_

_And he's gotta be fresh from the fight._

"Hello, Leo," Mikey said in this suspiciously sweet voice. "What can I do for you? Raph's busy. Doing what?" He snapped his fingers at Raph for an idea.

Raph came up empty and shrugged at him.

"He's on the jon. What do you need?"

Raph shook his head.

"We'll be home soon. What are we doing?" He snapped his fingers at Raph again.

I took the phone away from him and said, "They're with me. We're making a late night pizza run. What do depressed girls eat, you know? Pizza and ice cream. No, I'll make sure they behave themselves. Bye. Love you." I hung up and handed the phone back to Raph.

Raph wasn't at all bothered that we had blatantly lied to Leo. "Let's go see how much Johnny No Thumbs will give us for the rims."

So we headed off towards Johnny's hideout. They were in the front listening rap song and I said, "Do you guys even know what they're talking about?"

"Not really," Mikey said.

Raph stopped at a red light. We'd had to put the top back up on the car when we entered human territory again. A girl in a skimpy red dress and stilettos swaggered in front of the car in the cross walk. Raph tapped Mike on the arm, pointed at her and said, "What does that look like to you?"

"A hooker," I said.

"A rape about to happen," Mikey said.

Raph parked the car on the side of the street next to a meter and they both watched the girl.

"Don't go in the alley," Mikey said. "Don't go in the alley."

She went into the alley.

"That stupid bitch," Raph growled, getting out of the car. "Stay here and lock the door."

I could hear Mikey saying to Raph as they walked away from the car, "I think 50 Cent needs speech therapy. What do you think?"

_Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto_

Mike had left his phone in the front seat.

_Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto_

Donny left him a text message. I looked back to see if they were coming. My curiosity got the better of me and I looked at it and read, "It's alive! Where are the wire cutters? U coming home soon?" I felt kind of guilty, but threw the phone back in the front seat.

Then I saw the girl in the skimpy red dress fleeing from the alley. She was slightly dirty, whimpering and carrying one of her heels. She ran past the car. I saw Raph and Mike leave the alley when she was out of eyesight and Raph yelled behind her at the top of his lungs, "AND STAY OUT OF DARKLY LIT ALLEYS, YOU STUPID WHORE!"

They got back in the car and were a little out of breath but there wasn't any blood or anything so I suppose the guy lived to rape another day.

_I __need a hero. I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night._

Raph answered the phone this time. "What now? Can't you entertain yourself? Yes, I'll be home before morning. Goodbye."

Really feeling guilty now.

We drove for a few minutes in silence. Then I asked, "What song did you sing earlier?"

"That was STP," Mikey said, looking for more badass rap on the radio.

"What's that?"

"Plush," Raph said.

I still don't have any idea what they were talking about.


	21. Chapter 21

_I'm mentioning an event from "Ninja Turtle Baby Sitting Service." So refer to it if you get confused. The song that they all dance to is 'Drunk in the Mat Mobile' by Pogo, which is taken from 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.' His stuff is up on Youtube and Lastfm. He makes dance remixes out of old movies, mostly Disney. I can't advertise this kid enough._

Dear Diary,

So we were on our way to go pawn Trevor's rims to Johnny No Thumbs. I was having a blast. Every fifteen minutes or so, I would stop and go, "What are we doing?" And then I would think, "Who cares."

Johnny sells sandwiches at construction sites for the mob. I guess the mob likes to keep control of the vast sandwich empire. He has a sandwich van that he drives around with a big plastic sandwich on top and it plays "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and stuff. It kind of creeps me out.

Raph finally got us to the building where Johnny operates his front. It's one of those crummy money changing places with really bad exchange rates for desperate foreigners. So I've been here before with Raph during one of our adventures, which we tend not to share with Leo afterward. I wondered if Johnny had cleaned the destruction that we had wreaked on his office the last time we were there.

The guys in Johnny's gang are really used to Raph by now and think he's in a carnival or that he's some kind of circus freak. And they think I'm Raph's wife, so I had fun with that.

We met with Johnny in his newly furnished office and his midgetty thug Bald Tony stood blocking the door, with his arms crossed, like a bouncer. I remember Mikey laughing and pointing at the guy. He'd never met Johnny or any of his guys before.

I held onto Raph's arm, kind of clinging to him. He kept trying to flick me away without them noticing, but it was too much fun to act like the ditzy wife.

Johnny was reclining in his desk chair, with his feet on his desk. "So what can I do for you today, Mr. O'Neil?"

He thinks that Raph's last name is O'Neil for reason. Guess he didn't want to cop his real name.

"I got some goods for you. Some 17 inch rims." Sometimes I wonder if Raph gets his accent from watching old mob movies and studying their accents. He sounds just like these guys.

"Rims? I've been thinking about putting some on the sandwich van," Johnny said.

Mikey laughed again. "A sandwich van that plays 'Silent Night' and cruises around with rims? That's priceless."

"Who's this fool?" Bald Tony asked, cracking his knuckles.

Mikey bent down to look in Bald Tony's face. "He's cracking his little tiny knuckles. Ain't that cute?" He made goo-goo noises at him.

I squeezed Raph's arm, trying to indicate my desire to get Mike out of here as soon as possible. I was pretty sure that cute little Bald Tony had a cute huge gun under his jacket.

"This fool is my brother. Don't worry. He's cool. He was hit on the head by the strong man once and he's never been the same since. Well, I have places to be. What's your decision?"

"What's the hurry?" Johnny said. "I haven't seen you for ages."

"It's my birthday," Raph blurted out.

"Really? How old are you? If I'd known I would have sent a card."

"Six… Thirty five," he said in his most manly voice.

I was still clinging to his arm and said, "Honey, we have to get home. Our baby needs us."

"Our baby?" Raph said, raising an eyebrow ridge in confusion. "Oh, yeah. Our baby."

Johnny leaned back again in his chair as he thought and then fell backward out of his chair. During Johnny's brief scuffle on the ground, I could sense Mikey moving in the corner of my eye and wondered what he'd just swiped. "I'm good," Johnny said as Bald Tony helped him up. "So, Raph. The carnival isn't paying you what it used to huh?"

"Not really. An my wife doesn't have a job either. She's kind of useless."

I know it sounds horrible, but I couldn't resist. I said, "You didn't say that last night."

Mikey blasted out a laugh.

Raph had to fight that off for a second like he'd just tasted a lemon. After he fixed his face, he said, "Yeah, well. My woman is none of your concern. How much money do you want for the rims?"

"You bring 'em with you?"

We all looked at each other. Mikey said, "Actually, they're still attached to the car."

Johnny looked too pleased at that. "Well, I know somebody who could take them off your car, but it will cost you. I was going to offer $400, but I'll give $250."

"What?" Raph shoved my arm away so that he could huff and pace more efficiently. "That's utter bullshit!"

"Fine. It's bullshit. But it's my last offer."

Mikey jumped up and down, raising his hand. "What if we can get them off ourselves? Would you still give us the $400?"

Johnny looked understandably put off by Mikey's enthusiasm and leaned away from him. He fell out of his chair again and it took a few seconds for him to regain his seat in a dignified fashion. "Sure, kid. Whatever you like."

"Okay, deal," Raph said, without even thinking. I was not going to spend the rest of the night prying the rims off of Trevor's car. "Let's go, sweet cheeks."

Raph paid me back by slapping me on the ass as we left.

As soon as we got back to the car Mikey said, "Wow! That was so cool! We just scammed a mobster!"

"Scammed!" Raph said, pulling a CD out of his case that he'd brought along. "How did we scam him? We still have the stupid things."

Mikey pulled out his cell phone. "Yeah, but we have a mechanical genius who'll take them off for free."

We felt really proud of ourselves and Raph was in a more aggressive mood now and played one of my Nine Inch Nails CDs. They make me want to punch somebody or get body piercings. Turns out Mikey's prediction that we could get free labor out of Don wasn't correct either. He wanted $100 for the job.

"Tell him to fuck off!" Raph said. I'm sure that was unnecessary due to his volume.

"Look at it this way," I said. "Don'll have the money, so if he buys something it'll still be in your family, you know. You'll get to use it."

He didn't look convinced. "Yeah, but he'll buy a microscope or something. I won't use that."

Well, they worked out the deal and Don promised to meet us in three hours. He had some chemicals baking and needed to supervise them.

"What do you want for your birthday?" I asked Raph. "I forgot to ask."

He thought about it for a second and Mikey said, "Oh, get a new DVD player."

"I think I want a new iPod," he said.

"Oh, that's expensive." I knew I couldn't afford that.

"Hey, I know where I can get the money for that. We have some time to spare anyway."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Continuation of Raph's birthday. Turned out Raph's money was in the possession of some guy named Skeezy Pete. They sent me up a really dirty, barely lit, scary stairwell and hallway while they scaled the side of the building and broke into the hallway through a window. I lived through the experience and met them at the appointed apartment. The door's paint was half peeled off and the knocker was hanging on one hinge. I picked it up and knocked delicately.

A little girl in a Disney princess dress answered the door. "Who are you?" she asked.

"You don't remember me?" Raph asked.

"I remember you, but my daddy said that I can't let any little green men in while he's gone."

"Little green men!" Mikey said. "We're not aliens."

"We're friends of your daddy," I said.

"No you're not." Smart kid. "What do you want?"

"You're dad welched on a debt and I'm here to collect," Raph said. He pushed the little girl aside and went in the door. "Come in, guys. I'm sure Skeezy Pete won't mind the company."

We reluctantly followed him. The apartment was almost bare. There were two toddlers playing on the floor. "Are they twins?" I asked.

"Uh, huh. That's Jackson and that's Perkins. They're named after my mommy's grandpas."

Raph didn't have any interest in the kids and asked, "When will Pete be back?"

"I don't know. He left this morning. He'd better come home soon. I'm getting real hungry and I'm not allowed to play with the stove."

Mikey said, "You know, I used to have a dress just like that when I was a kid." If I didn't know the story, I would have panicked right there. "Let's go in the kitchen and see what we can find."

Mikey took the Disney princess by the hand and led her into the kitchen.

"Guess there's one left for each of us," I muttered to Raph.

Raph made a sound like, "Blech."

"Do you want macaroni and cheese or spaghetti?" Mikey said from the kitchen.

"Spaghetti!" the little girl said. I could hear her hopping up and down.

"What a coincidence? That just happens to be the house specialty." Then he gabbled some nonsense in what I assume was fake Italian.

We watched the babies playing with their toys and then sat down on a couch, which tried to eat us as soon as we set down our full weight. "Does Skeezy Pete leave his kids alone a lot?"

Raph shrugged. "We were left alone a lot and we turned out okay."

The little girl ran into the living room, holding Mikey's hand, dragging him along behind. He had this stupid smile on his face like he's never had so much fun in his life before. "Dance with me!" she demanded. She turned on a song that sounded like a euro dance remix of an old Disney movie and hopped up and down. I swear I heard Dick VanDyke's voice in one of those songs. Mikey picked her up in his arms and danced around the room with her. It was pretty close to the cutest thing I've ever seen. Raph shielded his eyes in vicarious humiliation.

I jumped off the couch and tried not to step on the toddlers as I joined them and danced like a really silly person. I remember doing the running man and the sprinkler. It was a lot of fun. Raph just sat on the couch, with his arms crossed, shaking his head at us. Finally, I said, "What's wrong, Raph? Are you scared?" I knew that would do the trick.

"No, not scared. I'm just the only one in the room with any shred of dignity left."

Mikey spun the little girl around and said, "I think you are scared. Poor Raphie doesn't have any rhythm," he told her. She pointed at him and laughed.

He jumped up on his feet and said, "Hey, I'll show you. Who do you think I am? Leo?"

He grabbed me really aggressively around the ribcage like he was looking for a handle to grab and I said, "Watch it, Butch."

It took him a second to get his footing, but then we went into this crazy kind of robot dance, except that I don't remember people doing the robot and getting tossed in the air and swung around as much as I did. I think it was like doing the robot with the crazy swing dance lifts and stuff. He got so into it that he eventually dropped me on the floor flat on my back. To tell you the truth, I was kind of glad that he dropped me because I felt like I had whiplash and was getting sea sick. "Aw, fuck. Sorry," he said.

"He said a bad word!" the little girl said, pointing at him.

"Yeah, he did," Mikey said, in fake astonishment. "Raph, you're corrupting today's youth."

The door opened at that moment and the guy I assumed to be Skeezy Pete came in the room. He stared at us for a second, recognized Raph and then put his hands up in the air like he thought we were going to shoot him. He was carrying a bag of groceries and they fell on the floor. I could hear a dozen eggs breaking. "Don't kill me, man! I have your money!"

"Ugh, I'm not going to kill you, Pete. Why don't you grow a pair?" Raph said, rolling his eyes.

So Skeezy Pete paid him his money and then pushed him out by the shell. Mikey and I followed and he shut the door in our faces. "Bye, nice alien man!" the little girl said as the door slammed.

We went to an all night department store and I went in and bought Raph the most expensive iPod that money could buy. I was a little surprised that he wanted it. I got back in the car and handed it to him and he just threw it in the backseat without really looking at it.

Don was waiting for us down by those abandoned docks where we'd been cruising earlier in the evening. Mikey blathered out everything we'd done so far and Don just looked mildly entertained. Except when Mikey told him that Raph had danced to Disney music. Then Don laughed at Raph and Raph whacked Mike upside the head. When Mike had run out of breath, Don said the most terrifying thing that I've ever heard issue from his lips so far. "Let's strap a JATO to this sucker and see what she can do!"

I don't even have the strength to go on now. I'll have to write the rest tomorrow.


	22. Chapter 22

_I don't know how to make a JATO and the only resource I have for the construction and utilization of a homemade __Jet-fuel Assisted Take Off__ Rocket is from "Mythbusters" and Wikipedia. So bear with me. I know it's kind of a happy coincidence that they find exactly what they need nearby, but it made me laugh. I've been really interested in their bathroom habits lately and if that is distasteful to anyone then… tough, don't read it. It makes them seem more real to me, I guess. _

Dear Diary,

A JATO? My first thought was, "Wow, that will really wreck Trevor's car." And then gleeful internal giggling. Then, "Wow, that will probably kill us all."

"Won't that kill us all?" I asked Don. He was digging through his duffle bag of destruction. I could see at least one detonator and some tools floating around. He's kind of anal about keeping his electronics and explosives neat, but not really about anything else. His tools lay all over the lair.

"Probably not," he said as he pulled out a canister with some mysterious powder inside. I was touched by his concern for our safety.

Raph and Mikey were running around playing at the end of the docks. Playing with Raph is like playing with a semi-truck and he kept picking Mike up and hurling him into the water. But I think Mike likes it. Mikey said, "Let's sing a sea shanty," as he floated with his shell in the water. The dead turtle float.

"There once was a man from Nantucket," Raph said.

"RAPH!" That was me.

He scratched his head. "How does the rest of that go?"

Mikey skipped up onto the dock. "That's a limerick. Not a shanty."

Don was hammering on the car really loudly and knocking parts out from under the hood.

"It has to be able to drive so we can get the rims back. What are we going to replace them with?"

"Don't worry. I'll cobble something together. There's plenty of trash around here." He was right. He'd picked a good spot. We were right next to an old industrial dumping ground. I'm sure he's come scavenging around here before. I could see some old rusty wheels on the other side of a chain link fence. "I'm going to look around for some metal bars so that I can hook my propellant onto the top of the car."

Propellant. PROPELLANT? "You have jet fuel? Where did you get it?"

"I made it. It was easy." He yanked on a few more wires and then grabbed a crowbar from his bag. He began prying the airbag out of the steering wheel. "This will bring some money too when you go take the rims in."

"You're going to get us killed," I said.

"It'll be fine. I'll just put a brick on the gas pedal when we're ready to go."

"Let's build a ramp and shoot it into the air," Mikey said.

"We have to get it back in one piece remember?" I said. I was actually as excited to see this thing happen as they were, but I also didn't want to walk through the sewers all the way back home. I know I'm supposed to be the voice of maturity and reason, but that's no fun.

Raph was lying on his stomach on the dock. He looked like he was taking a nap.

"I really have to pee," I muttered to myself, looking around.

"Take a flying leak," Mike said as he bent over the edge of the dock and tried to grab a milk jug that was washing past him.

I could hear Raph laughing and his shell vibrated up and down.

"I will not. I'm not even sure how. It sounds too hard."

"Too hard?" Mike asked.

Don threw the airbags onto the ground with a thud and banged on the console, prying it out. "Boys and girls are built differently, Michelangelo," he said. It sounded like a mumble under the banging and grunting.

"There once was a girl from Nantucket," Raph said, still lying on his stomach. "She couldn't pee in a bucket."

"Can we talk about something else now? How are you enjoying your birthday, Raph?"

He sat up and said, "It's been great so far. I didn't expect Don to blow up a car for me."

"I'm not blowing it up," Don said, tossing the crowbar on the pavement and then beating on the console with a hammer. "I have a delicate plan laid."

I took off my shoes and sat on the edge of the dock by Raph and Mike. My toes just touched the water.

"Does it involve stopping the car after its going 100mph with no driver?" Raph asked casually. He sat at the end of the dock and joined me, but his legs were too short to reach the water. "Damn, woman. You're tall."

Suddenly, _Hail to the Chief_ sounded in the air and I looked around in a panic. The realization that we were doing something naughty set in.

Don threw the hammer aside and sat in the driver's seat to answer his phone. "Yeah, I'm here. No everything's under control. Pizzas gone. Nah, you don't need to come over. It's pretty dull. Mikey's asleep and Raph took off."

Raph huffed through his nose.

"Yeah, you can talk to her." He held his phone out for me.

"Hey, sweetheart," Leo said. He can be really flirty and charming and he usually does it when he's trying to avoid something or when he wants to weasel information out of me. "If I didn't know better I'd think you were avoiding me. I'm really hurt. You know how fragile my ego is."

"You, fragile?" Don and Mikey were climbing the chain link fence and I turned my back on them to block them out of my mind. Raph was still sitting next to me on the dock, lowering himself down so that his toes would touch the water.

"Yes, actually. You have no idea how these little slights damage me. I always thought that I was your favorite. Now I'm getting an impression that you have a new pet."

I decided not to answer and to just let him hang there to let him know that I wasn't going to betray his brothers and tell him where we really were. So he dropped his sexy voice and said, "What happened with Raph? Everybody okay?"

"Yeah, he's great."

"And he took off?" He sounded confused.

"Well, great might be an overstatement." It wasn't. He was singing a rather relentless Jay-Z song to himself as he paddled his toes in the water, looking like an eight year old. "But no damage to body or property yet. I'm actually getting ready for bed."

Raph stopped paddling and singing.

"Oh, okay. I'll see you later then. Send them home if you get sick of them."

"Surely. See you later. Love you."

"Yeah, bye."

Raph pulled himself up onto the dock. "Why do you always tell him that you love him? Thankfully, you never say that to me."

"I don't know," I said, folding up Don's phone. "I guess I feel like he needs to hear it more than you do."

He pulled out a sai and dug it into the wood. I watched for about a minute and then said, "How does it feel to be sixteen?"

"Lucky."

"Feel any older?"

"Not really. I know that I'm taller since last year. Last year I couldn't touch my toes to the water even when I leaned down."

I giggled out loud. "I bet you were a really cute kid."

"Cute?" He snarled at the very idea. "If you want cute, then look at the pictures of Mikey when he was little. He was like a frickin' doll. All eyeballs."

"You have pictures!" I was about ready to do a dance of celebration.

"Yeah, we had a camera and Don didn't figure out how to develop pictures until two years ago. So we didn't get to see them until now. I'll break them out when we get home."

Don and Mikey came back and I was almost annoyed because Raph isn't usually so relaxed and conversational.

"Problem with the JATO," Don said. I tried to look concerned even though I was inwardly relieved that he had run into an obstacle. "I don't have any way to remotely break the thing and obviously none of us are going to drive it so…"

Raph jumped to his feet. "I want to drive."

Don looked doubtful, but he isn't known for standing his ground and I could see his safety resolve crumbling before Raph even finished his sentence. So I intervened and said, "Raph, if you try to drive that thing with a rocket attached, I will call Leo instantly."

I thought Raph would go into a rampage, but he looked thoughtful for a minute and said, "Yeah, maybe we should save this for when Leo's around. I bet he'd like to see."

"Are you crazy?" Mikey was hanging from Don's shoulders like a monkey. Don didn't seem to notice. "Leo'll rat us out to Splinter." He giggled at his own rude joke.

Don flicked him away. "That joke wasn't funny when we were six and it still isn't funny."

Mikey sat in the driver's seat and leaned it back as if he were going to take a nap. "I know. I'm just getting tired. It's making me stupid."

"It's your birthday, Raph," I said. "What do you want to do?"

I was shocked at how determined he was to stay in a good mood. I don't know if it was because it was his birthday or what, but he said, "Nah, I think getting the rims back to Johnny is more important right now. Isn't it a nice night?"

Don shrugged as he put his tools back in his duffle bag. "Hadn't noticed." He shooed Mikey away from the car so that he could reassemble it.

Raph was sort of bent over backwards looking at the sky. "Man, I wish we could see the starts here."

Mikey joined him, in a distinct position of little brotherly imitation. He pointed up at the sky and said, "There's one!"

"That's an airplane," I said. I was doing the potty dance by that time.

"You having a problem, April?" Raph said, knowing full well what was wrong.

"I think I'm about to pee my pants. I'm going to go in that warehouse."

"Whoa! Wait!" Don pulled his head out from under the hood of the car, holding up a car part with wires sticking out. "You shouldn't go alone. Mikey, would you…"

Mikey did a cannon ball off the end of the dock.

"I'll do it," Raph said. He walked off towards the warehouse expecting me to follow.

"Don't pee inside the warehouse!" Don yelled after us, as we went inside. "I keep stuff in there. There's a door in the back that goes…"

Raph slammed the door on him. I never realized how dependent we are on indoor plumbing and it suddenly struck me as a very unnatural practice. I've been so conditioned by human infrastructure that I can't even pee in nature, as God intended without getting all confused and anxious. I staked out a spot and stood there, staring at Raph as he stood there, staring back at me.

He took the hint after a while and wandered off.

It's very hard to pee in a sitting position. It's even harder when the floor is dirty and its dark and you can't really see what you're bare butt is next to.

I struggled to get into position and I must have sounded pretty frustrated because Raph said, "Problem?"

"I can't get my pants out of the way. How am I going to do this?"

"Need help?" I could hear him headed back in my direction.

"No." I didn't really want him witnessing my degrading situation. "Oh, how am I going to do this? I feel like I'm going to tip over."

"Want me to hold your hands?" I yelped because somehow he'd gotten right in front of me and I hadn't heard him coming. Damn ninja. "What? I understand if you're afraid of the dark, but I'm busy right now."

He took both of my hands and tried to pull my weight up, but it just hurt my knuckles where he was pulling. "Let go. That isn't helping."

"Lean back against the wall then."

I tried it and it helped. But I just leaned there looking really stupid while he patiently stared. "I understand that you've seen me naked and all, but this is something that I don't really feel like sharing with you."

He complacently wandered off again. Just as I was feeling relaxed enough to go, I heard, from the other end of the warehouse, "How'd you go in the woods?"

"Excuse me?"

"If you have so much trouble going outside, how did you pee in the woods when we were camping? Hey, look. There's a golf cart in here. Wonder if it works." I could hear him banging around and there was a crash as some stuff shifted and fell.

"Would you stop that!"

"Sorry."

I tried to gather all my Zen and chi and relax myself when I heard humming. Raph was humming that Paramore song that we'd been listening to earlier. For some reason, it really bothered me, hearing it come from a deep, manly voice and I just couldn't get myself situated because of it.

"Stop humming. It's distracting."

"I thought you liked this song." His voice was coming from another part of the warehouse now.

"I do but… just knock it off. Be quiet. You're a ninja. Think you can handle that for ten minutes?"

It was blessedly silent and I tried to gather my concentration again. I tried to imagine that I was in my own bathroom at me own house. I pictured my bathtub, my hand towels…

"Are you guys done yet?" Mikey said, sticking his head in the door.

"She's having some performance anxiety," Raph said, from much closer than I would have liked.

Mikey laughed and the door banged closed. I could hear him relating my hilarious shy bladder problem to Don. I smiled at myself as I heard the sound of Don telling him off.

"You done yet?" Raph asked. I realized he was about three inches away and then I couldn't help it. The dam burst forth of its own accord. I don't think my bladder has ever felt that stretched and it actually hurt. "Don't piss on me, woman," he said. He didn't sound entirely concerned though.

"Well, get back!"

I could hear him yawning as he wandered off again. I couldn't really feel if I was going anymore, which was a really odd feeling and then realized that I was done. But there was still a sound like running water trickling somewhere.

"Raph, is that you?"

"Bladder sympathy," he said from across the warehouse, over the sound of the water.

We left the warehouse, and found Mikey sitting behind the wheel of the running car. In the time it had taken us to go to the bathroom, Don had replaced the rims and tires with some junk that he'd hoarded around the docks and ripped out the stereo, the airbags and put the console back in. Mikey claimed that he helped, but I think hindered would have been a better word choice.

Mikey drove back to Johnny No Thumbs and we had to circle around a few times while he said, "Which way? What's that next to? Which way is North?"

But we got there eventually. There was a long debate about who should go in. Raph only wanted me and Mike to go in, thinking that any unexpected company might make Johnny flip out at him. I don't know why. He isn't a chimp or anything. But the man has armed guards, so I guess it's good be to be cautious. But Don didn't want to be left and he kept saying that he could make a better deal than Raph, which he wasn't thrilled to hear. So they settled on the three of them going in and they left me in the car.

They lugged the goods into the building and then the negotiations took forever. I could see their shadows moving around in the window, but no gunshots, so I presumed that it was going well so far.

I sat in the car, listening to the radio, and checked my voicemail messages. There was a text from Leo that just said, "Did I do something wrong?"

I knew that he could sense that something was up and I felt extremely guilty. But not just that. I don't think we realize how much he berates himself. He always seems to have it so together. I couldn't decide whether or not I should answer. We would be home soon anyway. It still felt wrong not to answer. I knew that he would still check for a reply even though we had gotten home and explained and reassured. I know how he works. So I sent back, "No, honey. Why?" I knew he wouldn't answer. I'm starting to think that Raph was right about including him in the big detonation of the JATO. It's too easy to think of him as an old school marm that we need to escape and not like our peer. Like we aren't as much friends with him. Like we have a little club that he isn't a part of.

They came out of the building hi-fiving and told me that Don had tricked Johnny into paying him double for the airbags, saying that they were rare because they had been recalled. Which doesn't make much sense to me, but they made over $1000.

There was some laughing debate over what they should spend the money on. It got pretty outlandish. I don't even remember what we said, but I laughed until I choked. Oh, yeah. Raph told Mike to buy a hooker and Don wanted to fly to Disneyland and go on all the rides at night when they were closed.

We got back to the lair at around dawn. Splinter was thankfully in bed, but Leo was asleep on the couch. Mikey and Don tiptoed past the "commandant" as they called him and went to bed. Raph took out the iPod that he'd had me buy and slipped it under Leo's arms. He went to bed and didn't acknowledge that I'd just been a witness to his generosity and didn't say goodnight.

I sat on the edge of the couch next to Leo and woke him up. He looked up with this really blissful expression for a second, like he didn't remember where he was or who he was with. Then he looked guarded as he shifted into a sitting a position.

"What did you do tonight?" I asked.

"Learned a new kata that Splinter gave me. What's this?" He pulled the iPod out from under him.

"Raph gave you that."

"Well, he should have been home learning that kata because it's for both of us. I'd better get to bed. I've got lots of work tomorrow. I'll have to spend all morning teaching it to him."

He took the iPod and went into his bedroom and I could hear him unwrapping the packaging as I left. I wonder sometimes if life is too hard for that kid and we're all just too stupid to notice.


	23. Chapter 23

_Was recently traumatized by a turtlecest fic and here is my attempt to exorcise it out of my soul._

Dear Diary,

I don't know how that kata went this morning but I got a text message from Mikey that simply read "HELP!" So I guess it didn't go as smoothly as Leo would have liked. I'll go over there tonight to snoop around and get the gossip from Don on what happened.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I went to the lair pretty late and they were all in the bathroom getting ready for bed. Well, the boys were. Splinter was watching Jay Leno. I sat next him and he started to greet me, but then held his finger to his lips shushing me.

For some reason, whenever one of them goes into the bathroom it's a signal for the other three to see what's going on. I have a suspicion that the bathroom didn't even have a door until I started coming around. I could hear the shower running and then Raph's voice say, "I bet I can sing every part to 'Doxology.'"

Don asked, "Do you even know the lyrics?"

Raph said, "Yeah, see." He sang, "Thank God from whom all blessings flow. Thank Him all creatures here below," in this horrifying high-pitched caterwaul. Splinter's ears flattened against his skull. I could hear Mikey giggling and somebody clapping.

"Don't encourage him," Don said. So Leo was clapping.

Somebody choked, "Man, you made me swallow water." I gathered that Mikey was in the shower.

Then I was confused because Leo said, "Get out of the way. You're on my foot."

"But I'm still soapy!"

Don sounded exasperated. "Just wash it off in the sink."

"You guys are hogging it."

"I'm not using it anymore," Raph said.

There was a pause and it sounded like they were all switching places. "What are you doing, Raphie?" Mikey asked.

"I'm boiling eggs in the toilet," he said, with his sarcastic tone. "I'm trimming my nails. You should start trimming your nails over the john too. I'm tired of finding your old toenail clippings all over the place."

Leo said, "Where's the soap? Did somebody make off with it again? Leave it in here."

"Here's your blessed soap," Don said.

Thump as he threw it.

I turned to Splinter and asked, "Do you they shower together?"

His attention was drawn from a raunchy joke about Britney Spears. "Oh, yes. Old habits die hard. When they were younger we had very little clean water and so they had to bathe together most of the time to conserve water." He looked embarrassed and I was ashamed for asking. They all had a really hard life growing up and I tend to forget.

"There's room in the shower now, you two," Leo said. There was some scrambling as they all changed positions in the hygiene assembly line again.

Mikey said, "Is this my toothbrush, Leo?"

"Raph," Leo said, sounding like an exhausted kindergarten teacher. "Take your belt off. It'll grow so much mold that we'll have to draft a government charter for the colony."

"Well, I don't want to lose it again."

"Where can it go?" Still Leo. "We're all in the same room. Mikey! Get that out of your mouth!"

Mumbling like Mike was talking with his mouth full. "Ish iz mine."

"It's mine," Leo said.

"Let me see it." That sounded like Don. "Smells like Leo."

I wrinkled up my nose. So they can identify each others' toothbrushes by smell? Maybe they need to brush their teeth more often. I may have to mention that.

"Well, then where's mine," Mikey whined.

Raph said, "Hey, hand me mine. I'm going to kill two birds with one stone."

"Ugh. Don't brush your teeth in the shower," Don said. "It's supposed to be clean. Only water should go down that drain."

"Only water?" Leo sounded really amused. "I pee in here all the time."

"That's disgusting," Don said. Sounded like he was spitting toothpaste into the sink. "I don't think bodily fluids should be in the tub. What if I take a bath?"

"Then you'll die of bacterial contamination," Raph said. "But that's not all you have to worry about because you know how much Leo jacks off in here."

Roaring boy laughter. I was shocked at first and then giggled a little myself. Then I remembered that their elderly father was sitting next to me and restrained myself.

Leo's voice said, "Don, what's wrong with your shell?" I suppose he gets jokes like that all the time because he didn't even sound like he noticed. "There's a yellow streak."

"What?"

More roaring laughter.

Mikey said, "Let's tell him that more often. I like watching him spin around like a dog chasing its tail."

"Must have leaned up against some wet paint."

They all got done in the bathroom and made a big deal out of my presence. Well, not really. Raph disappeared and turned out he'd just ignored me and gone to bed. Maybe I should be flattered that I'm so commonplace in their lives. Leo forced him to get up again and greet me properly. He got down on one knee and pantomimed dramatically.

Mikey nearly choked, he laughed so hard. Don was sitting at the computer. He indeed did have a yellow streak down the middle of his shell, like Pepe LePew. "You look like you're having a seizure, Raph," Leo said, watching him. "I don't think that's a big turn on for women. Or maybe it is. I don't know."

Mikey bent over the back of the couch and blew in Splinter's ear. He was watching television again and ignored him. Mikey did it a second time and Splinter ticked his ear. On the third blow Splinter said, "What do you want, Michelangelo?"

"Master Splinter?" he said sweetly. "Can we stay up?"

"Stay up?" Raph said belligerently, still on bended knee. "I want to go to bed."

Splinter turned around to see his deceitfully angelic looking son pouting out his bottom lip at him. "Well," he said, caving. "I suppose it would be rude for you all to go to bed since a guest is here."

Mikey danced off into the kitchen, as energetic as if he'd just woken up. Raph collapsed on the couch next to Splinter. He said, "What's up with Lloyd Banks? He needs to get out of 50 Cent's videos. He's too ugly to live."

Master Splinter was watching rap videos? It turned out to be a video preview on the end of Jay Leno.

"I have no idea who Lloyd Banks is," Splinter said.

Raph pointed at Lloyd Banks, who was surrounded by underwear clad women. "That's him. Ain't he the ugliest thing you've ever seen?"

Splinter judiciously said, "I am not a great judge of beauty as you seem to be."

I looked down and found a slim photo album in my lap and Don smiling down at me. "Raph said that he promised you could see them," he said proudly. "So here they are."

I weighed the slim book in my hand. "This is it?"

I looked around for Leo and saw that Raph was sitting on the couch doing a really ridiculous imitation of Lloyd Banks with his hands curved as he waved his arms back and forth in the air. Mikey skipped up to him with a bag of potato chips in his arms and tossed them into Splinter's lap. Splinter sighed resignedly at the abuse. "You have to go like this," he said, grabbing his crouch and walking along like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. "Why do they do that?"

Leo took the potato chips out of Splinter's lap and emptied them into a bowl. "I think it's like how a baboon presents, you know. A virility thing."

I was kind of sleepy and didn't really want to talk, but decided to chime in anyway. "Well, Lloyd Banks is ugly compared to the glorious beauty of 50 Cent."

"No comment," Raph said.

"Well, I'm going to bed." Splinter pushed Raph's legs out of the way roughly as he passed. "Good night, April." He recently stopped calling me Miss O'Neil. It makes me feel like a real insider.

"Let's go crazy and party!" Mikey said, vaulting over the back of the couch and grabbing a handful of chips.

"As long as we're silently crazy," Leo said. "Master Splinter just went to bed."

The other three all pantomimed silent cheering. I remembered the photo album and opened it up. All of them rushed to my side and looked over my shoulder. I felt like Marmee in "Little Women."

"Who's this cutie pie?" I asked, pointing to a young turtle child. He was unmasked, smiling and all arms, legs and shell.

"That's me," Leo said. I gave him a quick once over for comparison. He was a lanky one then and still a little now, but he's growing out of it.

The next one made me laugh. All four of them were spread out on the same mattress on the ground. One of them was in the middle, forcing the others to the sides and one of them was lying halfway off the mattress.

"That's Mikey in the middle," Leo said. "And Raph on the floor."

"Yeah," Don said. "Raph was the runt."

I expected Raph to whack him one, but he laughed and said, "Well, I had a growth spurt, didn't I?" I'd say so. He's not quite as tall as Leo, but his arms are huge.

I turned the page and saw another picture of Raph, squishing up his face like he was having a tantrum. "Yeah, I forgot how short you were," Mikey said. "Hey, look. There's me."

Raph was right. He did look like a doll. "Mikey, you were adorable."

"And I'm not adorable now?" He batted his eyes at me.

The next picture was also cute. Leo was sitting on the couch with a kid asleep under each arm. He looked kind of put out. Raph pointed saying, "Hey, I took that. Didn't you both watch that movie about monsters that hid in kids' closets and you were too scared to go to sleep?"

"I don't even remember that," Mike said.

"I do," Don said, with clear resentment in his voice. "You helped a lot, Raph, when you came in the bedroom and told us that if we didn't go to sleep Splinter would sell us to the zoo."

Raph leaned back and slapped at Don. "Well, we all had to sleep on that bed and it wasn't my fault that you two were whining."

I looked at the next picture and just stared for a second, trying to figure out what I was looking at. "Why is there a picture of Mike sitting on the toilet holding a bucket?"

"He had the flu and fell asleep on the toilet. It was funny," Leo said, pushing Don aside so that he could see better.

Mikey sat on the edge of my chair. "It wasn't funny to me. I think I lost ten pounds that week."

Picture time ended and then me, Raph and Leo went into the kitchen and looked at a book of more recent pictures. Don and Mikey had gotten bored pretty quickly. They were watching TV with the volume so low that you almost couldn't hear it. Seemed kind of odd to me, but they have really odd ways of amusing themselves, so I didn't think about it.

The rest of the pictures were fun to look at because I was in some of them and remembered most of the others, but they weren't especially remarkable. All except for two. One was a picture of me lying on the couch in the lair and Don painting my toenails. I'm going to make a copy of that one. And the second one makes me sad. It's a picture of Leo sitting at the kitchen table with his face in his hands. He's dirty, wet and has obviously just been in a fight. He didn't remember when it was taken. I think it should be titled _Tragic Warrior_.

Then I heard Mikey's voice in a bad imitation of a girl saying, "I love you, Mort. You're the greatest thing since sliced bread."

Then Don saying in a voice that was an obvious imitation of Raph, "Wanna go for a ride, chica? I'm a badass and girls love that."

"Oh, no!" Mikey squealed. "I'm a good girl and I should stay away from bad boys. But your rebellious charms are too hard for me to resist."

Raph and Leo were too distracted trying to guess what had just happened in the _Tragic Warrior_ picture to notice this weird dialog. I turned around and saw that they were watching a black and white movie from the 1950's. Two teenagers were standing in a suburb next to the James Dean look-a-like's new car. The girl looked swoony.

When the boy started to speak, the volume was too low to hear, but Don supplied dialog for him. "I promise I won't try nothing, Betsy. My parole officer is a lot hotter than you anyway."

"As surely as I wear this coordinating sweater set," Mikey said as the girl said a line, batting her eyes at the hero. "I will always be yours. Take me away from all this and ravish me! Do to me what I only hear fabled in rap songs! Just have me back by nine. That's when my family plays Cribbage."

The hero opened the passenger door of his car and Don said, "Well, get in, bitch. I don't got all day. I'm going do you so good that I'll knock you off your saddle shoes."

"Oh, Greaser," Mikey cooed as the girl jumped in the rebel's car. "You're such a poet."

"Well, I didn't kick your ass," Raph said. I turned around to see what they were talking about. I'd forgotten that we weren't listening to the same conversation. "I don't remember it being me anyway."

"Funny," Leo said. "I look really upset. You'd think I'd remember. Maybe a training session went really badly. Wouldn't be the first time."

I looked back at the two imps on the couch. They had changed the channel to a cheesy 1980's science fiction movie. There was a blond hunky hero who was flipping out at a girl with cleavage you could ski down. The movie cut to a big not-so-scary shark. I guess the shark was a threat.

Don said in a panicky voice, "Misty, we have to get out of here! That shark is smarter than both of us!"

Mikey said again in his high-pitched girl voice, "Well, Harry. That's not real hard, you know, especially since we were bred by the Soviets as idiots to be implanted in the CIA to make our government look bad."

"We must flee," Don said. The hero held up a tazer. "I say that we taze each other. Then when the shark eats us, we won't feel anything."

The heroine pouted her lips at the hero as Mikey said, "I don't like that idea. The current will ruin my Farrah hair."

"Damn it, woman!" Don said, as the hero aggressively grabbed the heroine. "This is no time…" His voice changed tone suddenly to compensate for the fact that the two characters started making out with each other out of nowhere. "It is time for love… They call me Dr. Shark Love. I love sharks and I love you, Misty." They made kissy noises.

"You love sharks?" Mikey asked after they had broken away and the heroine pointed dramatically at the water and then clung to the hero. "I thought you hated that shark. It wants to eat me. So I hate you now. I'm only clinging to you to throw you off because I'm going to taze your nuts until they roast and then take control of this island. Mwuahaha!"

I clapped my hands at them. I could see Don shrink down in the couch a little. I think he forgot that I was there. Mikey turned around smiling. "Thank you," he said, making a little half-bow over the back of the couch. "We perform here in the same venue every night."

"That was really romantic," I said.

Raph was distractedly sorting through pictures and said, "Mike wouldn't know romance if it jumped up and bit his skinny ass."

"I don't have a skinny ass," Mikey said, shoving potato chips in his mouth. "And you're a big expert on love?"

"Yeah," he said, getting up from the table with a devious smile. "I'd just do this." He got down on one knee in front of me again, gesticulating wildly with a pained expression.

I dramatically turned my nose up at him and he pantomimed cutting his wrists and croaking. He stood in front of me with his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth.

Leo was unable to restrain himself. Watching his brother do anything incompetently, no matter how idiotic, caused him great uneasiness. "You have to say something nice like this." He turned to me with a really serious look that made me laugh. "You're not helping my self esteem here," he said.

"Sorry. Go ahead. Seduce me."

"I believe in fate," he said. "And I feel that our friendship is destined to be more than it is now. When I hold your hand, I feel an electricity of pleasure at your touch and I hope that you feel it too. My heart is an open book. I know that I'm young and have no experience in love, but I hope that you know that it is because I have always been intended for you. I believe that there is one person out there for each of us and that we must not let go of that person. Our fates are entwined together like the wet throbbing waves of the ocean that…"

"Oh, baby! Take me now!" Mikey flew through the air and knocked Leo out of his chair. Then he ran around the kitchen cheering at his ambush skills.

Raph didn't notice because he was still squinting at the _Tragic Warrior_ picture again and said, "I remember this. It wasn't anything special. You fell in that old coal bin at the factory where that shaman was hiding out."

"That was awful sexy, Leo," I said. I have to admit that it was. He almost had me going for a second. Then I realized that it was most likely all lifted from _The Puerile and the Fidgety_. But his delivery was very good.

"I wouldn't want a girl," Don said from the couch, ignoring his brothers. Leo had Mikey in a headlock, spinning him around in circles. "They sound too expensive. A pet would be better. You could put them out at night when you got tired of them."

Raph threw down the picture and said, "If I made a move on a girl I'd probably just grab her and make out with her. You know, if she liked me she'd tongue back. If not, then she'd slap me like Scarlet O'Hara." And then you'd be up on assault charges, I thought.

Mikey was too busy being pummeled to give an opinion.

Master Splinter scuffled sleepily out of his bedroom. "What is going on here?"

"Nothing," said five frightened voices as we all jumped to our feet. Leo still had Mikey in a headlock.

"I demand that you all go to bed this instant!" he thundered. "I demand silence the rest of the night! I will not hear any arguments! Good night, everyone."

So, I was soundly punished with the rest of the children and sent to bed without supper. I slept on the couch. As I passed Don and Leo's bedroom to go to the bathroom, I saw Don spinning around in circles, trying to see the paint streak on his shell. I also heard Raph in the other bedroom saying, "Where's my belt?"


	24. Chapter 24

_Rather short and ridiculous. I hope it brings lots of laughs because it had me laughing. I can't point my toes without a cramp either._

Dear Diary,

I'm taking a pole fitness classes. Well, I've taken one class. I'm the youngest girl in the class and the worst. I can't even point my toes without a cramp. I'm not in bad shape or anything, so I can't see why. The class is made up mostly of middle age divorcees who are trying to get into shape so that they can categorize themselves as cougars. I'm going to have Don install a pole in my bedroom. I will be better and sexier than these old women. I will be.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don installed the pole and when I told him that I was going to use it for stripping, he gave me a really funny look and I'm sure that he's at home right now having a powwow with his brothers. They know what stripping is and may have seen it on TV, but I don't know if they really understand what it is. I'm expecting them to come over really traumatized from lots of Google research and accidentally stumbling onto porn sites.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I was correct about the traumatic research. Mike said that they tried to look for stripper's routines because Leo was curious about female flexibility and it had something to do with a kata that he has doing and I don't really remember because it was ninja technical and they ended up at a bondage website. Poor kids. I felt bad for them until Raph tried to show it to me.

They think it's really funny that I can't point my toes without a cramp. Leo's going to help me with that. My personal stripping coach is a fifteen year old mutant turtle who happens to be a ninja. Perfect. But I bet that Tonya LaCross, the rich divorcee won't have a personal trainer like mine.

We spent some time in the bedroom while I hung on the pole trying to point my toes and Leo going, "You're doing it wrong. Do this." But it did get better after a while. I just have to stretch and practice. But I was disturbed because I kept hearing, "Ewwww!" from the living room computer every few minutes.

Then Don's laughing voice said, "April, can you do that?"

Raph and Mikey whispered at him to be quiet.

I ran out to the living room and was relieved that it was an exercise routine and not some naked woman getting whipped. But she was upside down with her leg behind her head. "If I want my leg to snap off," I said.

"I thought all girls were super flexible," Mike said.

"Are all guys super strong?"

"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen," Raph said, pausing the video. "I'm going to learn how to do that."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Disturbing and rather unforeseen development in the pole fitness scheme. Mikey is a much better pole dancer than I am. They all are actually.

Mostly they all hang on it like kids on a jungle gym, but Mikey and Don can replicate most of the routines they see on the internet which is starting to give me nightmares. I keep yelling at them to get away from the pole now because they keep going in my room and daring each other that they can't do such and such.

I don't know how I'm going to explain it to Splinter if Don goes home and installs a stripper's pole in the dojo.

Leo is a good coach. He's got me pointing my toes really nicely now. I've been going to class and showing off my young legs for the old divorcees.

Raph hasn't had that much interest. He makes lots of crude jokes though. Yesterday he asked me which one of them was going to be my pimp and then asked where I wanted him to stick his singles.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Haven't written in this much for the past two weeks. I've been so determined to do learn my routine. Leo's been an infinite help. He's a good teacher. He's been here about every day helping me out. It's great.

They all watched me do my routine and I even played the music that we're supposed to perform to, "Li'l Freak" by Usher and Nicki Minaj. Ultra skanky.

I finished and Mike said, "It doesn't look like that when I do it." He learned my routine weeks ago, of course.

True, I did fall off once, but they all pretended not to notice.

Now I have to learn how to do the next routine with heels. Heaven help me.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mike can't fit into any of my heels and he's kind of sad because he doesn't like the idea of me progressing beyond his pole dancing abilities.

Lately, Raph's been using the pole to vault himself across the room over my bed. He runs at it, grabs it and spins around and then flies over the bed.

Don was spinning around on it today while Leo watched and gave him advice and he said, "Wouldn't it be cool if a stripper yanked one of these out and used it like a bo and took out all the guys in the bar? That would be awesome."

To a teenage ninja with no women in their species it would be, I suppose.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Pole dancing is at an end. Raph pulled it out of the ceiling. He almost had a nervous breakdown of remorse, so I easily forgave him. I'm relieved actually. I won't have to watch Don and Mikey in my bedroom going, "I bet you can't do that upside down." "Yeah, I can too!"


	25. Chapter 25

_My brother-in-law actually gave me that coin. I think I still have it in my coin purse. Kind of a disjointed chapter. I feel kind of sick today._

Dear Diary,

You know you run with a tough crowd when you watch "Ganglands" and one of them goes, "He wasn't that tough. I broke his leg." And then you look up to see the leader of the toughest New York street gang on the screen with a gun in his hand and his face blacked out.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Tried to trick Don into doing my taxes. I know it's only late August, but I thought I'd have to work on him early to get him to do it.

"This is like when you try to get me to do your homework," he said.

We were sitting in the lab. I like it there. It's full of broken electronics, moldy coffee cups and old plates of half eaten food stacked all over the place. Plus, he has a lot of really cool books. There was a new little furnace in the corner of the room.

"Would you shut the door?" he asked, as I sat down.

I got back up and shut the door. He was picking at a circuit board with a pair of tweezers.

"Where'd you get the furnace?"

He looked over at the furnace and said, "Raph found it someplace. It's propane. He scored the propane and the tank from one of his La Cosa Nostra people. It gets cold down here, even though it's summer and I want to keep this stuff from getting too damp."

"Want to do my taxes?" I said, swinging my legs under my chair like a little kid. Normally, I would flirt to get my way, but it only works on Leo sometimes, when he's feeling really generous and takes pity on me.

"Want? What will you give me?"

I didn't want to give him anything, so changed the subject. "So when are we going to use your JATO?"

His eyes lit up with that maniacal me-like-explosions look that I usually try to avoid. "I'm just trying to work out a remote control to break it and drive it. But it's kind of hard to get the parts I need."

"Well, we'll wait as long as needed. Hey, where's everybody else?"

He threw the circuit board aside and leaned on the center island. There's a big shipping crate in the middle of the room and I think he has it turned on its side because I know his valuables are inside, but he has the top covered in junk like a table and he has some stools around it. I got up and sat on the stool next to him. It felt silly to sit all the way across the room. "Splinter took Mikey out to the dump to scrounge for a new bathroom sink. I think Leo and Raph are with them, but I'm not sure."

"Do you like being here alone, having time to yourself?" I yawned, feeling a little sleepy.

"Yeah, but it's not exactly much different from being here normally. I don't like to sit in here all day long alone, you know. They might be gone till dinner time. So I'm glad you showed up."

We talked for a while about stupid stuff and I laid my head down on my arms, pretending like I was going to take a nap. He copied me and made a face. I giggled and made a face at him. We did that back and forth for a while and I'm glad nobody else was there to see it, although we were both probably unbearably cute.

After a while I did sort of drift off to sleep.

Next thing I knew, I could hear male voices talking. It sounded like Raph was mad. But I was really cold and couldn't figure out why.

Still kind of tired. Think I'll take a break.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I woke up to find myself in the strangest situation. Raph was holding me up in the shower. I didn't have any particular reaction except that I wished he would shut up and quit yelling at me and then I realized that I was fully clothed. And the water was freezing cold.

I batted him away, but my arms wouldn't work.

I think I was asleep or passed out for a while because I woke up with Mikey looking down in my face and I was lying on somebody's bed. There was a loud roaring sound outside. Mikey yelled, "Hey, she's awake!"

"What are you guys doing? Why was I in the shower with Raph?"

"Must have been a real nightmare, huh?" Mikey said. "Don't worry. They took the furnace apart and we're trying to get all the smell out of there. Don didn't have the air purifier on because he thinks it's too noisy. So we hooked that up now and have some fans blowing it out into the tunnels."

I must have looked confused because he added, "Oh, that furnace had something wrong with it and it was giving off carbon monoxide. We came home and Leo said you were both laying on the floor and it was, like, 90 degrees in there because he had the door shut."

"Is he okay?"

"Leo's steamed, but he's okay."

I tried to push myself up, but failed. "No, Don."

"Yeah, he came around a while ago. He's… uh…"

Mikey looked shifty like he was keeping something from me.

"Is he okay?" I don't know how I scared him when I was lying immobilized on his bed, but I did somehow.

"Hear that?" I listened and then I could hear loud weeping from the next room. "He's been doing that since he woke up. Raph told him that he almost killed you and then Don blamed him for getting a defective furnace. So, you hungry?"

My stomach flipped awkwardly at the idea of eating. Mike left because he can eat no matter what.

Then Raph came in the room, smirking an evil smirk.

"What are you so happy about?"

He sat on the edge of the bed and said, "It's not every day that I shower with beautiful women. And definitely not every day that they throw that many f-bombs at me."

"What?" I didn't remember saying anything to him. "I'm sorry, but you're not my type. What did I say? Is it filed in your blackmail folder?"

"You called me a green pervert. You told me you were off your birth control. You kept asking for your purse for some reason. You made a lot of threats that involved my 'nads. You were being quite a trouble maker."

I stared at him, embarrassed and wondered what other gold he was saving for later. I was sure it was worse than that. "What did Don say?"

He looked bitterly in the direction of the wailing. "Didn't hear. Don't really care."

I slept for a while and when I woke up, I snuck into Don's room. It looked like everybody else was eating dinner in front of the television and I could hear the _Little House on the Prairie_ theme playing. Raph said, "Why doesn't Charles Ingalls just tell those stupid people who pass through town every episode to get lost and solve their own problems?"

Splinter said, "Because he believes in altruism, unlike some that I know."

It sounded like Leo and Mikey were laughing at him.

I felt really stiff and my head hurt really badly, but I was okay. I shut the bedroom door really quietly.

Don was lying facing the wall and I could hear him hiccupping, still crying. I got really worried then because I was sure that it had been hours and hours since we'd woken up.

"Don, how are you doing?" He stopped hiccupping, but didn't answer. I sat next to him on the bed and rubbed his arm for a while. I couldn't really think of anything to say. "It was an accident."

"I… I… I know… that." It was hard for him to talk.

"Well, then what's up?"

"You m… m… must think I'm stupid," he choked out. "I shouldn't have shut the door… or used that without checking it… or turned off the air thing…"

"Turn over and look at me."

He hesitated but slowly turned over so that I could see. I made a pitying girl face at him. He looked awful. "I could never think that you were stupid. Maybe absentminded, but never stupid. You make your own rocket fuel for crying out loud. Now enough of this." I wiped at his face, which was really disgustingly wet.

"We're such a burden to you."

So I hugged him and then forced him to watch _Little House on the Prairie_ with everybody else. His brothers all gave him a nervous glance and then ignored him. Splinter said, "How are you feeling, son?"

He hiccupped really pathetically and said, "Fine."

I stayed there till really late, talking to Splinter. I really hate school and wondered what his advice would be. He thinks that I should look for work instead of living off of loans and I see his point. But boy, do I hate working. He excused himself and went to bed and I noticed that all of the boys were gone, probably to bed. I thought I would tell one of them that I was leaving and peaked into Mike and Raph's room. Nobody was there and one of the beds was missing. Then I looked in Leo and Don's room. Leo's bed was pushed against Don's and the missing bed from the other room was pushed long-ways against the end of the other two beds. They were all sleeping squashed together with Mikey all spread out in the middle. Raph was on the bed at the end with an arm and both legs hanging in space. I didn't wake any of them up and left.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Afraid of what Raph has on me. He keeps grinning at me like the Cheshire Cat.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Now the others know too. I'm sure of it. They keep giggling together when I leave the room.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Holy shit.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The humiliation has waned off enough to relate what happened. I'm blushing now as I write this, so I guess it's fresher than I thought.

I had Raph and Leo in my van because we were casing the streets looking for Purple Dragons and Leo was whining at me because it was raining a lot and he has a cold.

Looking for gang members is more fun than it sounds. Raph sang Christmas carols in funny voices while we ate cookies that Mike had baked and watched guys buying crack on street corners.

"I wonder what it would be like to date a gang member," I said, idly.

"Probably like dating Raph," Leo muttered as he squinted though the wet windshield to see what they were doing.

Raph was drinking a juice box and gave me a thumbs up.

"Can I have a juice box?" Leo asked.

I played the mom and stuck the straw in his box before handing it to him.

"Well, you already blew your chance to try it and find out when you said that you couldn't have sex with me because condoms don't work in showers," Raph said, throwing his juice box away.

Leo spat out his juice through his nose and laughed.

"What? I don't remember saying that. I don't remember even remotely thinking that."

He was smiling like his face would get stuck that way. One of those malevolent smiles when somebody knows they've just scored the ultimate chance to tease. "That's what you said when I was trying to save your life the other day by putting you in the cold shower when you were unconscious. And what thanks did I get? You said to get my hands off because we couldn't do it because condoms don't work in showers."

Condoms don't work in showers? That didn't make any sense. I belatedly felt embarrassed for hinting that I'd thought he was a suitable partner, but blew it off really quickly because I was more curious as to where I would get such a stupid idea. Then it hit me.

"Robyn told me that when I first got my period!" I said. They both flinched at the words. "She said that condoms don't work in the shower and she said that if you go swimming when you have your period you'll attract sharks."

Leo had been drinking his juice box again and sprayed all over the windshield. "Ow, my nose," he said, laughing hysterically.

"And my mother gave me a coin that said _The best kind of birth control_ on one side and on the other it said _Keep me pressed between your knees_," I said, remembering that fateful discussion.

Leo was choking by then. We stopped my silly sex joke reminisces so that they could jump out and attack the gang members. I had an equally evil thought as I watched them in the headlights of the van, leaping about, looking really cool, and fighting bad guys in the rain.

As soon as they got in the van, they both grabbed more snacks. I said, "At least it wasn't as bad as some of the stuff you guys have said when you were unconscious."

They both paused their eating and gave each other worried glances. "I don't talk when I'm unconscious," Leo said, half heartedly.

Raph didn't even try to deny it. He knows he says embarrassing things when he's unconscious.

"Yeah, you do too," I said, turning to look him in the eye. "When you were hit in the head two weeks ago, you called me mom."

Raph pointed and laughed at his respectable leader.

"And you," I said, turning to Raph. He stopped laughing, but kept absently pointing at Leo. "You declared that you were going to move to England and then asked if masturbating really makes you go blind."

Now it was Leo's turn to laugh and point.

Leo said, "It's no fun when Mikey's knocked out. He just keeps saying he loves everybody. And Don always asks for his shoes."

"He doesn't wear shoes," I said.

"Yeah, I know. So when you were unconscious he was saying to me, 'Leo where are my shoes? What did you do with my shoes? Have you seen my shoes?'"

We laughed until the gang members all came to and they had to get out and knock them all out again.


	26. Chapter 26

_I'm sort of disowning stuff that happened in The Communist Nation of TMNT vs. Mary Sue, not because I don't like the story, but because I can get better jokes here if I do. Took kind of a detour from what I had expected. I've been looking at Mary Sue stories where teenage girls fall in love with the boys and I can't help but think that it would go a little more like this. And sorry about the crude anatomy joke. It made me laugh. So sue me._

Dear Diary,

So bored. So infinitely bored.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Oops. Big oops. I sent a text to Raph that said, "Want 2 go 2 pool hall?" Then I did some laundry and when I checked my phone I had a message from Leo that said, "Why?" He always properly punctuates his texts. I couldn't figure out what he was talking about for a minute and then I realized that I had accidentally asked him instead of Raph.

Just when I was about to call him and explain it away, he called my phone.

He sounded really stern, like he thought I was making fun of him. I felt bad telling him that I asked accidentally and really was trying to ask Raph. Sometimes I go out with Raph and we end up wandering the streets drunkenly together. We usually start these binges by going to hang out at a pool hall with some crazy people who don't seem to notice that he isn't human.

"What makes you think I don't want to go?" he said.

Well, that threw a wrench into my plans. Go with Leo? Why would he want to go? He hated partying and stuff like that. I was sure that he had some kind of ulterior motives. Maybe he wanted to figure out where we went when we hung out so he could put a stop to it.

"Are you sure?" I asked. "There are civilians at this place."

"Yeah, I'm sure. I'll come over." He hung up.

Strange. I didn't sound like it would be as much fun with Leo. He's all about moderation and temperance. I always expected that the next participant on these trips would be Mikey, but he's still on a short leash at home and Raph's afraid of letting him out into wider society.

So I'm getting dressed and waiting for Leo to show up.

* * *

Dear Diary,

So here's how the night went.

I drove Leo in to Joe's Party Store. It's the only store in the city that Raph can walk into. But he has to wait until only the usuals are there.

"How come Raph can walk in this place?" Leo asked. He was gripping the door handle really hard and not getting out, even though there was nobody around.

"Oh, we were really drunk and it was late and I said that I needed… I don't remember what I needed… but he said he would get it for me because he's the man and he would provide and tried to walk into this store, but it was closed. So he broke in."

Leo's eyes were wide with shock and I was already calculating the apology I would have to give Raph after he got a talking to.

"And then when he was taking the… jerky! It was beef jerky. He was taking the beef jerky and then the lights came on and a guy asked what we were doing. He said he was sorry and that we had a jerky emergency. The guy told him to come back when we were open."

"He didn't notice his… abnormality?"

"He said that his money was just as good as a human." I got out of the van, hoping he would follow. He lingered behind me. I don't think he's ever been inside a store before. At least when it was open and full of customers and not when it was closed and/ or full of evildoers.

I didn't hold back with my liquor choices. I didn't know if he intended to drink at all and he tends not to. But I was going to give it a try. He's a really cool drunk.

Poor Leo. He looked like a deer in headlights. And it was especially strange to see him in a public place at all. It's interesting to see how they react in situations like that. Raph just acts like it's totally natural. Leo looked really scared. Just seeing him in the liquor aisle with all the fluorescent lights on him was interesting.

I realized belatedly that one of us has to stay sober to drive home.

"This is it?" Joe the cashier and owner of Joe's Party Store asked. "Don't you two usually stock up?" Then he looked up and I think it took a minute for him to realize that Leo wasn't Raph.

Leo was fidgeting and looking at the floor. "This is Raph's brother," I said. "He's a little shy."

"Shy brother? You don't look much like him." Joe rang up our stuff.

Leo's interest was piqued. "Really? I thought we'd all look alike to you."

"Never seen more than you and him, so I don't know. $38.48. Who do you take after? Your mother or dad?"

"I think I'm more like our father. Raph's more like…" He had to stop and think. "A psycho."

Joe laughed hard as I handed him his money. Leo looked a little sheepish at his not-that-funny joke.

"So who gets to drink and who gets to drive?" I asked when we were reboarding the van. "Because we can't do both."

"I'll drive," he said right away. "Wait, I don't know where we're going."

I pushed the bag into his hands. "Get started then."

"It's a little early isn't it?" He carefully laid the sack in the seat behind him. "Why do you and Raph drink so much together?"

Why do we drink together? "Well, he'll do anything if you dare him enough times." That didn't seem like a good enough explanation. "We don't really do it that much. We go to the pool hall every few weeks, but we've only drank together, like, three times."

He seemed relieved.

We got to the pool hall pretty quickly because it's nearby. I don't know the name. There isn't a sign out front. I don't think any of the patrons know the name of the place either. It's kind of a place like _Cheers_. The same people are there every time and they all know us by now. It's hard to forget Raph, I guess.

Whatever you call this place, it's clearly been here since the 1950's. It has that we-hope-aliens-land-soon-so-that-we-can-ascend-and-escape-this-Cold-War-hell design. You can see that the pool tables have been moved back and forth across the room so many times that there are trails rutted into the floor. And everybody uses the same table now, even though there are twelve others. It's so dirty that it looks more black than green. Lots of drink rings.

Leo followed me in, keeping his head down. I wonder if he felt like he was going to be attacked. I don't blame him for being nervous. I don't think he's ever been in a room with this many strangers who didn't want to kill him before. At least who were all looking directly at him and waiting for a formal introduction.

Skeezy Pete and some of his kids were there. The Disney Princess that I'd danced with another time and a sullen looking teenage girl, with her arms crossed. She looked like one of those girls were always wearing short shorts, tank tops and would not have spoken to me in high school. I think Pete started coming around because it's the only public place where he can find Raph. He likes to bum money off him. Pete looks kind of like a plant that's been kept in the basement too long. I introduced Leo and Skeezy Pete and Leo said, "I've heard a lot about you from my brother and it's nice to have a face to put with the name." Leo started to bow at him, but Pete held out his hand and forced him to shake it.

Then Sissy Hallowell introduced herself. She's sort of a cat lady or a bag lady. I'm not sure. She looks like she lives outdoors anyway. She always wears a plastic shower cap no matter what the weather. She says that it will ruin her perm if her hair is exposed to the air. "You're so gentlemanly," Sissy said, as Leo shook her hand. He was looking kind of wide eyed and fearful. "Don't worry. You're brother has told us all sorts of things about you." Eyes wider. More fearful. "The way Butch talks about you, you'd think you were made out of solid gold."

Blushy and a little confused. "Well, thank you, ma'am."

"Let me see him." That was Hiram Kooper. He's a 90 year old World War II veteran. He hobbled over to Leo and looked him over. "Doesn't look at all like how Butch described him. He made it sound like you were a lot bigger. Are those your swords?"

Leo reached for them unconsciously. "Yes, those are my katanas."

Then Skeezy Pete said, "Oh, these are my kids. That's Gentry…" He pointed to the teenage girl who was crossing her arms at him, "And that's Saje." He pointed at the Disney Princess. She was wearing her civilian clothes today.

Saje walked up to me and said, "I remember you. You and those other green guys took my daddy's money."

"Took your money? Did Raph rob you?" It's nice to know that Leo always thinks the best of Raph. Sheesh.

"I owed him a few dollars." Pete racked up the balls to avoid further discussion of his debts. "You know, Gentry is fifteen. Isn't that your age?"

"Sixteen, sir."

Sissy cackled. "What a gentleman."

Leo took a step closer to me.

"Why don't you two get to know each other? She's probably better company for you than us old people."

I still can't see why Pete did that. It almost felt like when a parent tries to set you up with their friends' kid. I can only think that in Pete's mind it would be in his best interests to make friends with Leo because then maybe he could get better interest rates from Raph.

So Leo tried to bow at Gentry, then remembered himself and reached out to shake her hand. She just looked at him like he was a freak. And rightfully so, I guess. He is kind of a freak. He's a freak that I love, but still a freak.

Hiram grabbed my attention and my ass and told me to sit on his lap. He's an old harmless pervert. I wonder how many young girls sit on his lap and I wouldn't doubt it if he gets more action now that he's old and cute than he did when he was young and awkward. Hiram turned to Pete and said, "Skeeze, your daughter's dressed like a hooker."

"Yeah, that's her mom's fault." He picked out a cue.

"How many kids do you have?" I asked. "Where are your twins?"

"They're at home. I have eleven kids."

"Eleven kids!" Sissy said, pulling her knitting out of her plastic bag that she carried instead of a purse. "Get a new hobby."

"And guess what," Pete said. "My girlfriend's pregnant."

I looked for Leo to check on his progress with his new friend. I realized with a shock that this was the first girl his own age that he'd ever met. They were sitting next to each other on some bar stools and he was swinging his feet like a little kid. But he had his hands clasped in his lap and was listening to her very politely. I felt like taking a picture to show to his brothers later. Gentry was saying, "I'm so mad that my dad took me here. We're supposed to be on visitation."

"It seems like any time with your dad would be good time." For some reason, I'd expected him to go into his charming flirtation. He can sound so grown up sometimes and then other times, like this one, he can sound so young. His own age, I guess.

"I hate my dad," she said with absolutely no passion.

"Oh, you shouldn't say that."

Awkward silence. He was looking around the room, ignoring her.

"So what are you? Some kind of monster?"

I felt bad for him there. But he was really polite and said, "No, I'm a turtle. See the shell." Pointed at his carapace.

"Why are you so big and you can talk?"

"Well… I'm not really supposed to say."

She looked him up and down a few times. "You don't wear any clothes."

I almost said, "Well, neither do you," but held my tongue.

He seemed to be getting really self-conscious and said, "Well, we don't really need them."

"Are you a boy?" She was looking at his crotch.

Hiram was watching them now too. "Skeeze, is your daughter a slut?"

"Could be," Pete said. He was helping Saje hold a pool cue so that she could hit one of the balls.

Leo noticed her eye line. "Yes, why would you think otherwise?"

"Well, you sort of look like a boy and you sound like a boy and you act like a boy. But you don't have boy parts."

"They have boy parts," Sissy said. "Butch took us all in the bathroom that time and showed us."

"What!" I yelled. "When did that happen?"

"Oh, you weren't here."

So Raph had flashed all these people. I bet they dared him.

Sissy couldn't give it a rest. "They're parts are up in their shells until they need them. You tell Butch that he has nothing to worry about."

"Yeah, I'll do that," I muttered.

Saje knocked a ball into a pocket with her hand and jumped up and down cheering.

"Let's talk about something else please," Leo said in a rather high pitched voice. Now it was his turn to look sullen and cross his arms.

"You're the same age as my grandsons," Hiram said, pushing me off his lap so that he could get to his wallet. "Here's a picture of them." He handed the picture to Leo and Gentry. "That's David and that's Jason. They go Amsterdam High School. Do you go to school?" He aimed that at Gentry. He must know how the boys were educated already.

"I go to Jefferson High," Gentry said.

"My father taught us," Leo said. He was looking really intently at the picture. It must be strange for him to see humans his own age.

"You were home schooled?" Gentry asked, with clear disdain. "Home schooled kids are freaks."

What a brat, I thought.

"Skeeze, your kid is a real snot," Hiram said.

"Are these Doris' kids?" Sissy asked him.

"Doris? I thought you didn't have kids, Hiram," I said. I pulled out a cue to help teach little Saje.

"I don't. I adopted Doris when she nine. See, I'm from Pinkville, Michigan and I used to live on the Kooper family farm. It was real big. All the buildings were big. Even the chicken coop was huge. I used to rent it out to my sister's nephew Adam Alverson and his kids. Anyway, I wanted to hire a hand and then I read _Anne of Green Gables_ and realized that it would be easier to adopt a kid because I wouldn't have to pay them wages. So I adopted Doris and she lived in the hay loft and cleaned my house for me."

I'm not sure if that's true or not. He's made stuff up before.

Leo played pool and what do you know? Mr. Perfect learned the whole game in about five minutes.

And then the most hilarious thing happened. Gentry actually started flirting with him. He just seemed really annoyed with it because he would tell a really lame joke, not expecting a response and then she would stand next to him and laugh and twirl her hair. I wonder if he thought she was losing it. Nobody's ever flirted with him before.

I spent a few minutes wondering why she was doing it, but he was looking pretty cool, shooting pool and even demonstrating a basic kata for Sissy. That gave him infinite cool points. When we were about to leave she asked if he had a Facebook page and he said yes and then she asked if he wanted to exchange cell phone numbers. He just shrugged and went along with it. I was surprised that he didn't cry out, "Secrecy violation! Secrecy violation!"

I took him home and we told Raph that we'd gone to the pool hall. As Leo was headed off towards his room he said, "Oh, yeah. Sissy wanted me to say that she didn't get a chance last time to tell you that she was impressed with your endowments."

Raph's face equaled utter horror.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don told me that Gentry called Leo and asked him if he missed her and he said not really. She huffed and puffed at him and now she's probably Facebook stalking him. Even mutant boys living in secrecy in the sewers can't escape obsessed teenage crushes.

And big surprise, Raph was really drunk when he whipped out his junk for all those old people and didn't even remember. Hehehe.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph was told off by Splinter for his exhibitionism. AHAHAHAHAHA.

That girl sent Leo a Facebook message saying:

_ Hey Leo how are you I thought you were really cool and wondered if you wanted to hang out some time but not with my friends because they would freak out I was wondering if you liked me at all you didn't seem to like me and I wondered if I would ask I thought your swords were real cool._

He said something wishy-washy like she was a nice girl but his current situation as an underground ninja and crime fighter prevented him from "liking" anybody. Then fumed around the lair that such a stupid girl liked him.

Mikey suggested that they send her a picture of Raph's… uh… endowments and maybe she'd be so impressed that she'd remove her crush to him. He got a bit of a thrashing for that comment.

So he ignored her for a week and then he gets this gem of a message:

_ Why don't you answer me back I thought you liked me and that you were cool what's wrong with me am I not good enough for you I know I am fat and ugly and stupid do you think I'm ugly and fat and stupid._

I saw him enter into the reply space: _Yes_. Then he erased it and defriended her.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The teenage angst drama continues here on _As the Turtle Turns_. Gentry called him back and he had deleted her number out of his address book and didn't recognize it when it came up on his caller ID and he answered it in case it was one of his brothers calling from a pay phone in an emergency situation. That's happened before.

I wasn't with him when it happened, but Don said that he turned many pretty shades of pink and then said something like, "I can't go out with you. I'm sixteen and I'm not ready for commitment."

Knowing he said that makes me laugh hysterically. I mean, that he had cause to say that for any reason.

Anyway, then he said, "No I don't think you're fat. I think you're stupid though. Don't you know how to use a period?"

Don said that he suggested that he say that there were physical incompatibilities that would prevent a physical relationship, but thankfully, he didn't go with that line of reasoning. Don would have sent her charts and diagrams and everything.

So she verbally abused him, calling him all kinds of horribly offensive names like a "mean, shit faced troll" and hung up on him, claiming she would never speak to him again. He had a little more bounce in his step after that proclamation and Don told him to reenter her number so he would know it was her next time.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just found the liquor that I bought last week. Guess we had fun without it. I did anyway.


	27. Chapter 27

_I had so much fun with Gentry, Hiram, Skeeze and friends that I thought I'd come back for another trip. The JATO is forthcoming when I figure it out._

Dear Diary,

So the teen drama has not ended. Sigh. It's sort of like _Twilight_ except Edward is totally indifferent to Bella. Splinter's kind of at his wit's end because when he trained his sons to be ninjas, he never suspected that they would be hiding from obsessed girls. It's given me endless amusement.

She friended all of his brothers and me. She keeps sending me messages asking if Leo's mad at her. I haven't answered.

Leo refused to talk about it, which is impressive because the name Gentry is mentioned in some capacity whenever he walks into a room. He's been looking really overly dignified with his nose in the air.

Funny little exchange today. Raph wanted to go the pool hall to try to squeeze more blood out of Skeezy Pete. They were all in the dojo sparring and Leo said, "I will not let you leave, Raphael, (he calls them all by their proper names when they're training) until I see you finish every one of your kata exercises."

So he stops sparring with Don and then does his katas at lightning speed. It was like watching a kung fu movie in fast forward. Mikey laughed like he would puke. Raph walked out of the dojo, giving Leo a really cocky look and had quite a swagger for a while.

Mikey followed us and begged to go along. Raph threatened to tie him up and leave him in the tunnels, but his begging was so overbearing that I gave in finally. Mike said, "I'll just be five minutes. This is so cool. So I need to take a shower and eat something and I want to check my email."

So an hour later, we left for the pool hall. We tastefully skipped the liquor store because we're both terrified of a drunken Mikey. He's not been able to get his hands on enough liquor to be anything more than buzzed. And the evidence provided so far shows that he will be a truly frightening drunk.

The usual suspects were present at the pool hall. Including, horror of horrors, Gentry. Saje was at home with the twins. Gentry got all excited when she saw Raph and Mikey and kept looking out the door like she expected Leo to come along.

"Leo's not coming," Mikey said to her. "I'm his brother Michelangelo. Your name's Gentry right? That's a really weird name. Don doesn't like it. He says that it means a class of people in a hierarchical society. But I told him that we all have funny names too and that your name doesn't really say anything about you. Except that Juliet said, 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' I think that's true. I think I'd be the same if my name was Larry and not Mikey. And you'd be the same if your name was Sharon and not Gentry. You look like a Lindsay to me."

That was some hello. So I guess that one doesn't have reservations about meeting humans his own age. Raph said, "Yeah, I'm Raph. Where's your dad? He owes me money." He's such a people person.

Hiram Kooper was at the pool table, expertly flicking the balls around the table. He hobbled up to Raph and said, "Hey, Butch. You've brought us another one."

"This is Mikey. He's a pain in the ass. Sorry, I couldn't get rid of him."

Mikey didn't notice that he'd just been insulted. He was literally vibrating with excitement. He held out his hand for Hiram. "Hey. Nice to meet you. Who are you?"

"Hiram Kooper. You're the little pain in the ass. Mikey, right?"

"That's me." He thought about it for a second. "Hey!"

"Where's Pete?" Raph asked, scanning the nonexistent crowd.

Hiram shouted into the back of the building, "Skeeze, are you on the can!"

He was answered by a flush.

"Guess so."

Mikey was talking to Gentry again saying, "I don't think Leo likes you. You're human and all. We don't really like human girls. Well, we do… but we… We like April but none of us wants to sleep with her or anything. So Leo probably thinks your great, but he doesn't like you like that. Plus he's married to his katanas anyway. Cool! A jukebox! Does it work? Raph, do we have any quarters! I'm going to play Tone Loc. Do you want to hear a song?" he asked Gentry.

"Does it have any Taylor Swift?"

"Maybe. I don't think so. This stuff looks kind of old. Like, '90's old. Luther Vandross. Who's that?" I wondered if he'd accidentally taken a No-Doze again. The horrific sound of "Funky Cold Medina" echoed through the room.

"That sounds like a bum banging on a garbage can," Hiram said.

Skeezy Pete was huddled down in a chair while Raph towered above him, or towered as much as he can at five feet tall. He makes up for his height with his big arms. Pete said, "So I owe you $750 right?"

"I believe it was $750 at 8%. That's… $810." I'm impressed at his mental math skills. "And I want the ten!" He spun his sais in the air.

That caught Gentry's attention. She'd been watching Mikey, who was dancing to "Funky Cold Medina" with Sissy. "What are those? Forks?"

"These are sais. They're weapons." He holstered them, looking pretty impressive. I'd actually be afraid of him if he hadn't given me a Mother's Day card this spring. That was a tragic day for me.

"Do you stab things with them?"

Pete's eyes bugged out at the idea.

Raph's swagger came back and he said, "Yeah, I can stab if I put enough force behind them. And that's not too hard, you know. Mostly they're used for disarming though."

"Are they sharp?" Uh, oh. Hair twirling.

Of course, he was too stupid to notice. "Not really. Well sort of."

I decided not to be the hover parent/ sister and started a game with Hiram. "It bothers me that those youngsters live in a sewer," Hiram said, as he racked the balls.

"Yeah, it's pretty stinky."

"I've been afraid of enclosed spaces ever since my friend Red Boeskool died."

I was psyched. A crazy, not-true story was on the horizon. "Who was he?"

"Oh, he was the bank manager back in Akron. I lived in Ohio after I lost the farm. I set a bunch of aerosol cans on fire and it blew up the house, so I sold the land. Anyway, I knew Red when I met him when we were both judges at a potato peeling contest. Well, the bank he was working for had to close because nobody could find the keys to the vault. It was one of those new ones with a key and only Red had it. Then his wife came over to the bank and said that she'd caught him en flagrant with Mitzy Greengrass, one of the tellers. They had a drag out fight in the bank lobby and Mitzy pulled off Janice's wig right there in front of the customers."

"Who's Janice," I interrupted.

I took a shot and looked around briefly at Raph. He was slow dancing with Sissy. She pretends that she's in love with him.

"Janice was Red's wife," Hiram said. "Anyway, Mitzy said that she was in love with Red and that they were going to run away to Indiana. That's where everybody run away to in those days. Don't really know why. There's nothing there. So the next day neither Red nor Mitzy come to work and everybody assumed that they'd gone off the Indiana together."

"Poor Janice," I said, hitting a ball exactly where I wanted it to go. I did a little victory dance.

"Don't get too pleased with yourself," he said. "Anyway, on the third day, the workers noticed this funny smell coming from the back room. And they'd had to close down the bank because nobody had a key to the vault and Red was long gone. So they called in the cops and they brought in a truckload of C4 and they blasted that sucker open."

"Wow," I said. "I bet the insurance company wasn't pleased."

"And what did they find? There was Red's dead body lying in a sleeping bag on the floor."

I laughed. Probably not the best reaction to hearing that his friend died in a bank vault.

"He'd accidentally let the vault go closed or else he was too dumb to realize that he should keep it open and he suffocated there in the sleeping bag. His wife had found out about him and Mitzy and he'd decided to sleep at the bank."

"Well, where was Mitzy then?"

"Oh, she thought he'd stood her up and was sitting at home crying. Poor girl. She went to his funeral and then they had another cat fight up by the casket…"

I couldn't take my next shot because I had to pee, so I excused myself. When I got back by the ladies room I could hear Mikey's voice blathering about something. I presumed he was in the men's room.

And then I opened the door and heard, "…I tell Master Splinter that eggs make me sick and he still make me eat them anyway…" It wasn't the fact that he was in the ladies room talking about his digestive problems that bothered me. It was what he was doing. He was standing in the middle of the ladies room with his hands on Gentry's breasts.

The instant he saw me, he jumped at least six feet away from her, pointed dramatically at her and declared, "It's all her fault! She made me do it against my will!"

I was disturbed, but not enough to deter me from going to the bathroom. I could hear them both leaving after I got in the stall. At first I was thinking really serious thoughts, like should we have a serious talk about physical boundaries and then I started laughing in spite of myself, realizing that he'd been groping that girl and talking about indigestion.

He was hiding behind Raph when I came back and I said, "I know there will be some idiotic reasoning behind it. Spill."

Mikey glanced at Raph because he didn't want him to know. He'd get walloped. "Well," he started. "We were talking and I said that…"

"Who's we?" Raph asked.

"Me and Gentry," he said. "She asked if I'd ever felt up a girl before and I said no. Then I remembered that time I accidentally landed on you, but she said that that didn't count, plus you're old and everything…"

"Old?"

"And she asked if I see girls her age much and I said that she was the first I'd talked to and she asked if I was afraid of her and I said no and she said…" he took a huge breath to continue his run on sentence. "…she said that I should feel her up while I had the chance and I asked if I needed to do anything official like ask her dad's permission and that I can't do anything romantic with girls because it's forbidden and because I'm not a mammal and she said that it shouldn't matter then, so I did it."

Raph didn't look as pissed as I'd thought he would. He looked thoughtful and asked, "What was it like?"

"Like touching boobs, I guess."

Hiram had been listening in at the pool table and said, "Skeeze, your daughter is corrupting that reptile boy."

I was beginning to have an extreme dislike for Gentry. Who was she to corrupt my little brothers? They were probably all going to die virgins against their wills. Did she have to make it worse?

Sissy diverted my attention when she asked Mikey to play a game with her. "Oh! That's awesome! How do you play! Do you win money! Isn't this cool? Let's play Pearl Jam on the jukebox!" He was having the time of his life.

I decided not to leave Gentry out of my supervision, but I didn't want to hover around them conspicuously. So I stood at the pool table eavesdropping.

"Mikey's real cool," Gentry said. "But not as cool as you."

"Yeah, I know," he said. I bit back a laugh.

"Guess what we just did?" Holy Toledo, I thought. "He was just touching my boobs."

"Yeah, he told me," Raph said, without much interest.

That wasn't the reaction she'd been hoping for. "How do you know?"

"He told me. I don't want to listen to Pearl Jam. What else is on this dinosaur?" I could see that she wasn't holding his interest.

"What did you think?" She had an unmistakably flirty tone.

"I don't know. Eddie Vedder's voice gets on my nerves. I'm a better singer than he is."

"You sing? That's so emo."

Oh, yeah. That would bring an interesting reaction. "EMO! JOHNNY CASH SANG! WAS HE EMO?"

Pete fell off his stool at the volume of Raph's voice.

Hiram turned away from the game that Mikey was losing to Sissy. Mikey seemed just as pleased with losing as if he'd been winning. Hiram said, "Skeeze, your slut daughter is pissing off Butch. Better get her to stop before he kills you."

"Who's Johnny Cash?" she asked, suspicion in her voice.

I had my back to them, but I could hear him flipping violently through the song catalog. Then "I Walk the Line" played. "Is that fucking emo?" he asked her.

"Ugh," was all she said. "He sounds old."

"JOHNNY CASH WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST SINGERS OF ALL TIME, YOU BRAINLESS LITTLE WHORE! AND YOU'RE FAT!"

I had to turn around to witness this. Shockingly, she seemed rather enchanted by his masculine rage.

"What is emo?" I asked Hiram, feeling really old.

"Ain't that a big bird?" he guessed.

"So, can I have your cell number?" she asked in a kittenish tone. "You can have mine."

"GO TO HELL!"

He stomped off towards the bathroom.

Mikey lost about $200 to Sissy, but she thinks he's the cutest thing she's ever seen so she let him get away with it. Let's be honest. He is the cutest thing I've ever seen. But not when he's cracking guy's skulls open with his chucks. Then he's kind of scary. Other than that he's the definition of adorableness.

I had to pry Mikey away from the pool table to go home and Raph said to himself as we were leaving, "I have to go home and do my kata."

"What's that? You're girlfriend?" Hiram asked.

Raph colored up a little, but said, "No, that's… piss off. It's none of your business."

"I'm just playing with you, Butch," Hiram said, putting an arm around his shoulders. "Your boy scout brother explained it. Now, you behave yourself. I'll find you and kick your ass if you don't."

"Yes, sir." It was the exact same attitude and tone he uses with Splinter.

And of course we couldn't leave without Sissy making some kind of really embarrassing comment about the size of Raph's genitals.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just heard a fairly interesting story from Mikey. They were out on a training run and they were jumped by some kind of super skilled Purple Dragon guys. There was a lot of Hamato family honor talk prefacing the fight description, but after he got done with that he said that one of the guys chased Don around the corner. Chased isn't the correct word because he didn't run away. Bivouacked. Well, they were all worried and Super Advanced Ninja Dude was kicking their asses and then Raph's phone rings. He answers it because he assumes that it's Don telling him where he is so they can get over there and help him. And Mikey said that Raph's voice rings out in the night with, "HOW DID YOU GET MY NUMBER! I WOULDN'T HANG OUT WITH YOU IF YOU WERE THE LAST BITCH ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH! IF I EVER SEE YOU AGAIN, I'LL BREAK YOU FACE!" And then Super Advanced Ninja Dude slashed his arm with a machete. Not too badly though. His arm is still attached to his body.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I was trying to get Don to tell me what Leo said about Gentry transferring her affections to Raph and whether or not he was jealous because I loves me some teen drama. But all he wanted to talk about was Super Advanced Ninja Dude and how he almost cut off Raph's arm. Stupid ninjas with their preoccupation with life and death situations. No appreciation for drama. And from what I could get out of him, Leo was really pleased to have another reason to tease Raph.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I asked Raph about why he thinks Gentry is into him and he said the funniest, most boy-like thing. He said, "I wanted to get rid of her, so I was really mean to her and sent her nasty emails, but I think it made her like me more."

I told him that ignoring her would be the logical thing to do.


	28. Chapter 28

_Thought I'd break up the cuteness with some violence. I've been trying not to stick so closely to Raph lately, but I couldn't really see this idea fitting any of the others. I had the realization the other day that these guys could seriously kill her. I was weighing how much they have in advantage to her physically and wondered how it would go if they were matched. So this is the perverse result. A lot of preface on this chapter because it's fairly dramatic and taking me a while to figure out. I'm trying to think back to that "This day will be over eventually" day in my life. One of those worst days of my life moments. Chapter's getting long but I don't think I can break it in half. I've also seen Raph squeezing out a yearly tear or two but I don't buy that. He can't do anything halfway, even if he is tough._

Dear Diary,

This has been the worst day of my life.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We still don't really know if Raph's okay. We don't know what's wrong with him. They're having a hard time keeping him restrained. My back and arm and face hurt.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The blood testing didn't work. Damn. Well, we can't expect Don to know how to do everything.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's coming out of it now. Should go see him. Don forced me to go to the hospital to get something for the pain.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just spent the worst hour of my life with Raph. But I don't blame him. I hope they figure out why this happened.

* * *

Dear Diary,

So me and Raph and everybody are feeling better now and I think I'll write out the details of what happened. We're still trying to figure it out. I mean, we know how it happened, but we don't know why. Probably some other person with a grudge against the Hamato Clan. Boy, am I sick to death of that. Why can't anybody leave them alone?

I was sitting at home on a Friday night watching _Bridget Jones' Diary_ because that's what I do nowadays and Raph called me. It was about 1am and I was in my pjs and about ready for bed. I considered just not answering, but then I realized that he would just come in the window anyway.

I answered and at first I didn't hear anything but his heavy breathing. It sounded like he was running, but I couldn't hear him moving. "What's going on?" I could tell something was up.

"I don't know. I feel real funky."

"Are you sick?"

"What… fuck… that moving… no… what did you say?"

"I asked if you're sick." Maybe he'd been hit on the head.

"I don't think I'm sick. Are you at home?"

"Yeah, maybe you should come over."

There was a long pause and he just kept panting into the phone. "Shit, I feel strange. There's a loud ringing in my ears. I can barely hear you. What did you just say?"

I was getting seriously concerned. "I didn't say anything."

The sudden volume of his voice made me start. "WELL, WHY AREN'T YOU ASNWERING WHEN I ASK YOU A QUESTION?"

"You didn't ask me anything. Don't yell at me, you little turd."

Another pause to hear his heavy breathing. He said, "The street lights are real bright."

"What's wrong with you?" There was a long pause. It sounded like he was muttering to himself with the phone at his side and I could hear him moving around.

"That thing bit me," he said. Then he said in a really aggressive voice that actually scared me, "If I come over there, you won't fuck with me and lock the window."

"Why would you think I would…"

"I wasn't asking. I was telling. You're not going to do that." He hung up.

I immediately called Leo's phone and left him a voice mail message telling him that it sounded like Raph was delusional or in a fugue state in an unspecified location and he was on his way to my place, so don't tarry. I don't remember clearly what I said.

Nobody showed up for about two hours and I had just turned the light off when I heard somebody coming in the window. It's surprising how normal that seems to me now. I didn't even look at the intruder and went in the bathroom to wash the Cheeto dust off my hands.

When I left the bathroom I found Raph standing in the middle of the kitchen. He was soaking wet. Rain was falling on the open window sill. He was also cut and bruised all over and blood was dripping all over the floor. But that wasn't the problem. He was just looking around, like he had never seen the place before. It makes me sick now even thinking about this and what happened next. He was standing there heaving like a mad bull.

I made a tiny sound. I think I moved one of my feet and instantly knew that I had done the wrong thing. His head snapped around to look at me and… I've never seen that look before. It wasn't the typical Raph rage look. Just kind of an animal like glare. Gives me the creeps as I picture it.

I had this fleeting memory from back in May when he gave me the Mother's Day card and he was all blushy and said, "Well, thought I should get you something. Cost a buck." I don't know why. I think it was me trying bring up a memory of him where he didn't look blindly homicidal. You know, the Raph that we all love.

"What's wrong?" I asked, in a really shaky voice. "Something's wrong."

And then, before I could register what had happened, he had flown forward and thrown me face first into the wall with all of his weight behind me. I remember thinking, "Raph's going to kill me," and just cycling that empty thought over and over for the next thirty seconds.

After he threw me against the wall, he backed up and I fell in a heap on the floor on my face. I made a really weak attempt to move away from him, but he sat on my back. He wrenched my left arm behind my back and leaned forward, keeping me pinned.

I could feel him sitting there, breathing hard.

"Why are you doing this?" I said. I think I was crying.

He gave me a hard pound on the back and then somehow I got my arm away from him. I managed to half roll under him and we had a little scuffle as I tried to get away from him. I remember thinking that I wasn't going to get killed, even if it was my Raph killing me.

"STOP FIGHTING ME!" he screamed in a really jerky, hoarse voice. "I GOT THIS UNDER CONTROL."

He bitch slapped me on the face. I still can't believe how hard a slap that was. That's what really put me over the edge because I know that Splinter forbids them to hit each other with an open hand. It shows disrespect to your opponent. He got the better of me, but I still kept trying to get away. He flipped me over again onto my back and I could tell he was reaching up for something. I knew I was under the land line phone and even though I couldn't see it, I knew he was pulling it out of the wall with one arm. Then he tied my wrists behind my back.

He got off me then and I felt even more scared because I didn't know what he was going to do. I turned my head to look at him. He was standing there again, his body shuddering. He was letting out a quiet, low pitched growl. He looked really terrifying with the blood smeared all over him now.

"What… you…" I was crying at him really hard. "…you bastard…" Seemed like a witty and relevant retort at the moment.

He ignored me and stood there heaving and growling to himself. Then out of nowhere he reached over and pulled the fridge out from the wall and knocked it over. It crashed only about six feet away from me and I screamed.

"I can fix this," he muttered, pacing off to my bedroom. I could hear him saying, "I'll get it right… I took that guy's head off…"

Then he came back and sat down next to me. He reached around my head and gagged me with a pair of my leggings.

"This will be safer," he said. He didn't sound at all like himself.

Then he just sat there next to me for a while, watching me. His eyes were all bloodshot and he kept looking all around and then back at me. Once he said, "Why are you crying?" Then he instantly forgot and looked around again.

I was hoping that he was coming out of whatever his problem was, but then he jumped up and out of nowhere kicked me in the side. I made a lot of noise into my gag. Then he started pulling dishes out of the cupboards and letting them crash onto the floor.

He made quite a mess and there was broken glass all over the floor. He just kept walking over it back and forth and pretty soon there was a blood trail from his feet and he didn't even notice. He looked down and said, "This is typical."

Then I heard Leo's voice at the window calling for me. He was being quiet, trying not to wake me up in case I was asleep. But he figured out that something was wrong right away. I thought that Raph would try to hide from him or something, but as soon as he saw him he let out a roar and blindly charged at him.

Don climbed in the window after him. I was holding my head up at a really painful angle to see them. He got me untied and picked me up off the floor. I was pretty out of it and I remember he carried me into the bedroom and shut the door to block out the sound of Leo and Raph fighting. It didn't last too long and it got quiet. I remember me and Don exchanging a worried look, wondering what had just happened out there.

Then Leo opened the door and he didn't have any _I just murdered my brother _look so we both relaxed a little. "What happened here?" Leo asked.

"Is Raph okay? What's wrong with him?" I asked. I was hyperventilating and it took a while to get the sentence out.

That was Don's cue to go and see what was wrong with him. He left the room in a hurry. Within about ten seconds I heard Don yell from the living room, "Leo, his pupils are dilated. I mean, they're huge."

"And what does that mean?" Leo yelled back. He was sort of rubbing my back with one hand, but I could tell that he wanted to go out in the living room and be with his brothers.

"It could mean a lot of things, but the first thing that comes to mind is drugs."

Raph's on drugs?

"I don't mean drugs," he corrected. "I mean drugged or poisoned."

I don't need to go on about how I cried and shook all night and day, so I won't mention it anymore, but it took awhile for the pure shock of it to wear off. But I wasn't mad at Raph. I mean it wasn't like that time that he broke my nose. He did that out of negligence and it was partly my fault for waking a sleeping ninja in the first place. I could tell that something was really wrong with him and I was more worried that we would never get him back and my last memory of him would be of him slapping me as he tied me up and gagged me.

They called Mikey, who was home and in bed, and of course he didn't answer his phone. So they carried him down the stairs to the van while I limped behind them. That was probably one of the most dangerous things they've ever done, at least while I was with them. I shudder to think what would have happened if somebody had happened to be coming home from working the night shift to find the three of them going down the stairs.

I have to take a nap now. My head hurts.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I'll skip the shock and reaction and stuff from when we finally got him into the lair. When Splinter found out what happened, he insisted that Raph be securely restrained. Leo tried to argue the point. I can see why he did. It just felt so wrong. I felt really guilty seeing him tied down to the bed in the infirmary.

There was a lot of debate about what could have happened and they made me recount it all. Mikey held me on his lap while I described it and kept interrupting to call Raph names.

"Michelangelo," Splinter said. He sounded so tired and sad. "We do not know what has happened to him."

"We do too!" Mike said from behind me. "He finally lost it. I always knew he would just go crazy on us all someday."

"His pupils are so dilated that I'm pretty sure that it's pharmacological," Don said. He sounded rather depressed at the idea. "I have no idea what to do about it either."

"Take some of his blood while he's out," Leo said.

"Guess it can't hurt," Don said. "Looks like somebody beat the crap out of him too. And his feet are badly cut up. How is he the one who always ends up poisoned and stuff?"

I wondered that myself.

"Poor Raph," Leo said to himself.

"Poor Raph? Poor April," Mikey said, again from behind me. He tightened his grip around me a little.

Leo sighed an irritated little huff. "I'm sure that he wasn't in his right mind. I mean, I think somebody did this to him. How do you think he'll feel when he figures out what he did? Anybody think of that yet?"

No, but thanks for alerting me to that horrible future event, I thought.

So Don took his blood while he was out. I remember watching and thinking that he looked so young. And yet he was lying there, covered in abrasions and cuts and bruises and his feet were all bloody like John McClane in _Die Hard_. But with bits of glass and porcelain sticking out.

Don had to pull out the glass and complained the whole time because he doesn't like to do doctor's work. He prefers blowing things up. So I helped him do a bunch of stitches in the bottoms of his feet. He's going to be hobbling for quite a while.

Well, Raph didn't wake up for a few hours and then they had a hell of a time keeping him tied down because he was like a steaming locomotive. He was just yelling and fighting the clothesline that was tying him down and it was starting to cut into his wrists because of the force he was using to pull himself free. But Don wouldn't sedate him because he was didn't know what he'd taken or been given. So we just had to watch him struggle and scream at us and cuss us out until he was so worn out that he just lay there, staring at the ceiling. As I said. Worst day of my life.

Well, we had the blood samples and Don and I looked at it under a microscope, but it did absolutely no good because we had no clue what we were looking for. So I offered to take the sample to the university lab during open hours to run tests on it.

Well, skipping ahead. I took the first test batch in and it came back as inconclusive because the sample was contaminated. Guess that can happen when your lab is in a sewer. So we tried with some of the rest of the blood he had taken the next day.

By then Raph was sort of in this withdrawal state. Well, maybe a low after a high would be a better way to put it. He did nothing but sleep for twenty four hours.

Don told me that he had some kind of super strong stimulant, similar to cocaine only twenty times stronger. And in a pretty high dosage. There was nothing to do but wait for him to come out of it.

Gotta take my pain killers.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Back again.

Well, Raph came around the next day. He mumbled to Don that you know it's a good party when you wake up tied to a bed. He didn't seem to remember anything that happened because he just smiled benignly at me when I came in the room and seemed embarrassed to have me see him in such a poor state.

"If you took any funny pictures, I'll kill you," he said to Don as he checked his pulse.

"Pulse is a little low," Don said as he threw a bloody wad of gauze in the garbage can like a basketball. "But I guess we'll worry if it goes down. Nothing to do about it anyway."

"Hey, who beat me up?" Raph said, sounding rather annoyed. He worked his arms and grimaced. "It was Leo, wasn't it?"

I sat back in my chair and let out a little sigh. Don noticed because he has ears like a dog and notices everything. "What's up with that?" he asked as he helped lower Raph back down on the infirmary bed. "Are you hurt on your body?"

"Not really," I said, through clenched teeth.

Raph was looking at the clothesline with a sleepy and mildly curious expression and then at his bloodied wrists.

He made me take my shirt off so he could see the damage. I could see Raph craning his neck around to see better. I hadn't realized that I had a great big bruise on my side and my back. And there was a mark where'd held my arm. Plus I had a three fingered hand print developing on my face.

"What happened to you?" Raph said, full of shock. "Who did that?"

"Um… I don't know," I said as I put my shirt back on. I kind of hurt to reach my arms around to do it.

Don sent me to the hospital then to get pain meds. I think he really wanted to get rid of me for a while because they needed to help get Raph in the shower.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Went to eat dinner and now I have returned. Don cooked something with tuna in it and it smells like a dead person's feet.

Anyway, I got back from the hospital and took my meds and felt a lot better. I wish I could have said the same for Raph.

Well, he was in a shockingly good mood for his situation when I got back. He was still sitting in the infirmary, but he was arguing in vain with Leo, who was stuck to him like glue.

"I'm fine now. Just let me sleep in my own bed for a while. Tomorrow we'll spar and skip around in a field and pick daisies, if that's what you want. I'm dead beat right now." Leo had propped Raph up against the headboard. He was cleaner now and that made me a little more comfortable.

"Sleep here."

"Hey, wasn't I at your apartment last night?" Raph asked suddenly. "I was looking for somebody."

That's what he thought he was doing? "Yeah, you were there," I said, unconsciously taking a step away from him.

"Guess I found him. Where is he?"

"Well," Leo looked worriedly between us. "We don't know who you were looking for."

He shrugged it off and it was blessedly quiet for a second. "Hey, wait," Raph said. "We have to find whoever that douche bag was that beat up April. Did you get a look at him?"

I didn't answer.

"I bet it was that guy I was looking for. But… what's… you have a three-fingered hand print on your face…"

He looked from Leo to Don, who both looked away from him. "Which one of you guys did that?"

Don looked up in surprise at his conclusion. I put my hand over my face, to cover it up.

"It wasn't one of us," Leo said without thinking.

I remember thinking, _Oh, this is it_.

"Well, how many three-fingered people are in the world?" Raph asked, his voice rising. "It must have been one of us…" Then he figured it out.

Mikey was standing in the doorway, looking really cold and almost pleased. He said, "Last night you went over to April's apartment, slapped her around, kicked her and tied her up with a phone cord."

Raph didn't look like he'd heard him at first.

"Mikey!" That was me. I didn't like hearing it out loud yet. It still sounded too horrible.

"Oh, and you punched her in the back and smashed all her dishes and the fridge." I couldn't believe him. He was getting a real evil pleasure out of seeing the dawning comprehension on Raph's face.

The next hour was one of those hours where you just think every minute, _It'll be over soon_, for an hour.

For the first half an hour Raph just lay there on the infirmary bed, looking like he was dead. You know, I think I prefer it now when he just screams at us, breaks something and storms off. It's much easier to deal with. We all just yell at him and tell him he's an ass and he gets over it. I know I used to complain about what a burden his temper was before, but you know what. It isn't. Now he was totally shut down and wouldn't look at us or talk.

Splinter gave Mikey a sound telling-off for saying that to Raph, which seemed harsh to me since he was just telling him the truth. But I suppose it was the unusual malice that got the telling-off. He sat with Raph, trying to get him to talk to him, but then told us to leave him alone and he would come to when he was ready to deal with us.

I know he's almost killed Leo in the past more than once and I asked if this is how he usually deals with it. "No," Leo said. "He does that in a fit and it's always an accident. This was… I don't know what this was…"

We sat watching _The Puerile and the Fidgety_ while we waited for him to come to again. Out of nowhere, I heard the most agonizing cry I think I've ever heard. The instant that I registered it, Leo said to himself, "That's not a good sound," and was off to the infirmary.

So now I know how Raph cries when he really cries. Not like those other two times. The first time I saw him "crying" was when he was having a fight with Leo during movie night and it turned out that he was getting the flu and had a 104 degree fever. Then he wept a little over his lost horse money. This is what happens when he really cries and I've been told he only does it every couple of years.

There was a small crash and I could hear Leo's high pitched voice saying something to Raph, but I couldn't tell what he was saying over Raph's sobbing. It wasn't like when Don was crying all day. He just had a long, dull wail that went on all day. Raph's crying is heart wrenching. I don't know if I've ever heard anybody crying that hard in my life. I was afraid he would rupture his throat. I came a little closer to see what was going on. He and Leo were sitting on the floor.

Then I ran away. I feel like such a coward. I just went home. But I wished I hadn't because the fridge was still overturned and there were broken dishes everywhere.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Well, things are better now. I made sure to spend a day with Raph to let him know that I'm not afraid of him. He has this downtrodden look lately. He came over the next day, looking like death warmed over. He was hobbling and I was mad at first that he had walked through the sewers with his feet all cut up.

"We want an infection, huh?" I asked.

"Well, what am I supposed to do? Sit around? I have important things to do. I have to clean up this mess. You shouldn't have started it yourself."

I noticed that he was holding a box behind his back.

"What's that?"

"Oh, a present." He held it out at arm's length like it might explode.

It was a morning star mace. "How cute. It'll go with my new dress."

"In case you need to beat me off again in the future."

We tried to clean up the broken glass, but we were both all stiff and looked like a couple of old people, so we gave it up and I asked if he wanted to watch _Bridget Jones' Diary_. I could tell that he distinctly didn't want to watch it, but he bucked up bravely and said, "Sure, I haven't seen that."

He sat at the opposite end of the couch from me, which made me sad. At about the halfway mark I said, "Come over here with me. I'm lonely."

"No, thanks."

So I went to him. I leaned against his arm and I could feel him tense up. He stayed that way through the rest of the movie.

I fell asleep and woke up in my bed. I was disappointed that he'd left because we hadn't really talked yet. But then I saw that he was lingering in the doorway.

I moved over and motioned for him to join me, which he did reluctantly.

"You're lucky I'm not Mikey, the little pee pot," he said.

"I thought he only peed on you though."

"He's a bed wetter. And Don's a talker. I hate sharing a bed at all. I can't sleep if somebody's touching me. Don lays there blabbing for hours. And Leo travels a lot. I always wake up with his feet in my face."

"Can I?" I said, motioning to him.

"I'd rather not," he said, scooting away a little.

But we were cuddled together anyway when I woke up. So I guess he changed his mind later.

Don came over and made us an awful breakfast. He said that he thinks that some new big bad decided to off either them or him or us all together by giving Raph a psychotropic drug. Don thinks the drug was designed to increase aggression.

"I remember feeling a sting when I was fighting those guys," Raph said as he drained his tea and politely picked at his burned sausage. Normally, he would have just told him that the food wasn't fit for a dog and thrown it out, but he was still too full of guilt to be rude.

"Maybe it was a syringe," I said.

"I thought it was a bee." He shivered at the idea. Bugs. Ick.

"Well, we all survived," Don said, leaning back in his chair. "I'm thinking about finding a car for the JATO."

"The JATO!" Raph said. "That's awesome. I have money. Let's get out the classifieds. We need a junker."

So, yeah. They rebounded quickly. They're all about the JATO project. Even Leo. He wants to use an old T-Bird for some reason, but Raph keeps saying that it's probably going to be launched into the East River, so it doesn't matter what model it is. Leo wants to have a special car in honor of the occasion. If he knows of the occasion, maybe he'll share it with me because I'm in the dark.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Ah, we all survived is the occasion. I see what you did there, Fearless.


	29. Chapter 29

_I'm trying to find a real, logical way that they could do this and it would be hard enough if you're a regular teenager, let alone a ninja. So you'll have to wait another day or two. *Insert evil cackle here*_

Dear Diary,

Raph's sort of been shacking up with me for two days now and I notice that only Leo and Don are coming over to see him.

It's like have a really repentant green boyfriend. Usually he can't stand physical contact that isn't violent, but for the last two days he's been hanging on me every minute. I wonder if it's different to him if he initiates the contact. I don't know. He's weird.

JATO preparations are well under way. We're looking for a car so that Don can get on welding a rack to hold the canisters. I have no idea how that kid got a hold of welder's tools and I don't think that I want to know.

You know, they're all taller than I previously estimated. I think I cheated Raph out of, like, five whole inches. And Leo is even half an inch taller than him. I used to assume that mutant turtles were short by default. Now I think it's more like teenage mutants are short because they're teenage. Except Splinter. He's a lot shorter than they are. Nobody's given me a clear answer on that. They don't like talking about mutation stuff. I think it makes them feel other than normal.

We were looking at Craigslist ads today, and yes, Raph was standing behind me with his arms around my waist as we looked. I feel like I should ask Leo to take pictures of us so I can blackmail him later when he isn't feeling guilty.

"I think I want something lightweight, but with a big chassis," Don said as he scrolled through the listings.

So he plans on modifying the car. Great.

"Hey, if we don't wreck it, then we could keep it and drive it around," Raph said.

Leo said, "How would we afford gas." Kill joy.

We didn't see any that Don liked so Raph's going to call some of his people tomorrow.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph talks a lot in his sleep. He was mumbling about what happened the other night, saying some of the stuff that he said like, "I've got this under control," and, "I know how to fix this." So I think he remembers what happened now. I don't really sleep very well when he's in bed with me. For the past two nights I've gone to bed with him on the couch and woken up to him spooning me, which is bone chilling.

* * *

Dear Diary,

If Raph doesn't quit with the cuddling, then I'm seriously going to slap him around. I'd nut him, if they weren't up in his shell.

* * *

Dear Diary,

He's laid off today, so it's all good. Guess it was the guilt. I don't blame him. It was kind of nice to be closer to him for once, I guess. Or it would have been if he bathed more consistently. But I'm not exactly complaining now that he's back to normal and doesn't want to be touched again.

Hiram Kooper might have a car so me, Raph and Don are going to go over to the pool hall tonight to check it out. That ought to be fun.

Mikey still isn't talking to Raph, which is really strange since he's not normally this dramatic. Don reports that Mike's been strutting around the lair with his nose in the air. I don't think it's having the effect desired because Don makes it sound like he's a precocious two year old.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just got back from the pool hall. And what do you know. Skeezy Pete and his kids were there. A whole bunch of his kids. Gentry, Saje, Jackson, Perkins and two other boys. I think their names were Hunter and Ethan. Raph hesitated when he saw them all and Don pushed him through the door.

When Gentry saw Raph, she picked up one of the twins in an attempt to absorb the toddler's cuteness, I think. But the kid threw up on her and she had to go to the ladies room to clean up. I remember watching her go to make sure that neither of my boys went with her.

"Well, I've met them all, haven't I?" Hiram said as he shook Don's hand.

I was surprised at how confident and at ease Don seemed. He probably comes off as the most well adjusted of them all. At least here. Little do they know…

"Yup, I'm Donatello. I'm usually second to youngest, but this year I'm second to oldest. Don't ask. So do you have the car here?"

Sissy waddled away from Saje, who wanted to try on her shower cap, and held out a hand to Don. "You're the last brother, right?"

"Yes, ma'am." He made a dramatic bow.

"Are you as well hung as Butch?"

Raph's face matched his mask. But that's what he gets when he flashes people, I say.

Don seemed to agree and leaned in to her and said, "I guarantee that I am I better. But I keep it all for myself." I think he realized that she'd ask him to prove it.

So I let Hiram and Donny go outside to look at the car by themselves. Gentry came out of the bathroom, adjusting her bra for ample lift. She's actually pretty far on for her age. I was as flat-chested as Raph when I was fifteen.

"Hey, you haven't answered my calls," she said to him, pouting her lips at him. He was too preoccupied with the toddlers that had attached themselves to both of his legs to notice. "Are you mad at me?"

"I don't care enough about you to be mad about something," he grunted as he tried to kick one of them off. They both giggled.

"Want to go to a party with me Saturday night?"

"A party? I thought I wasn't fit to be seen. I'd give your friends the horrors."

The horrors, I thought. Where'd he pick that up?

"Oh, I think they'd like you. You're real cool."

He got his swagger on again and then I had the horrors when I realized that he was about to say yes. I know how his mind works. Party. Drinking. Lots of crazy people. He could just ditch her somewhere and enjoy himself.

"Ninja. Secrecy. No," I said.

He said. "Yeah, she's right. Can't do it."

"But you can come here," she said, whining at him in what she probably thought was a cute voice.

I couldn't hear what he said next because the other three kids were running around me in circles, screaming. I had an urge to beat them all with a pool cue.

Don and Hiram came in the door again and Don's super strength hearing picked up on what Raph had just said.

"What are you guys talking about?" Don said. "Invited where?" I thought he was about to say, "Why didn't I get invited?" But he said, "I want you to stop calling us. Stop calling me to see if Raph's awake, if he's in to you, if he's mad at you, what he likes in girls. I actually don't know what he likes in girls now that I think of it…"

"Moving on," Raph mumbled to him.

"But I guarantee that it isn't you. His silence is not some attempt to get your attention or be coy or make you jealous or something. He's much more direct than that and he's not as much of a manipulative little bitch as you are. So leave him alone."

She burst into tears and ran back into the bathroom.

"Skeeze, your daughter's having a nervous breakdown," Hiram told Pete.

Raph and Donny were both happy because she was there until we left.

Don was the star of the show that night. He played pool with his bo, which was really cool. Then he did a song and dance number, using it as a cane. Raph just watched him with one of those "they grow up so quickly" kinds of smiles.

But I did notice that Don clammed up really quickly when they tried to talk to him on his own. He didn't have a problem in group conversation or when he was just showing off for the whole room.

But he got along with Sissy the best because she just kept petting him and being nice and comforting. She asked for his cell number, which he provided. So Don is now good friends with the bag lady in the shower cap.

Skeeze wouldn't talk to him and he's afraid of small children, so he just kept side stepping them and fleeing across the room when they came near them. Hiram kept saying embarrassing stuff to him. Like he hinted that he was gay because he wears purple and then Don gave a funny speech about how their father made their first bandannas out of old bed sheets that he'd found in a dumpster and he'd ended up with purple because Mikey bit him so that he could have the orange one. Plus, Splinter couldn't tell them apart at first and wanted them color coded. That made me laugh.

Raph spent the rest of the evening with naughty children hanging off of him like a jungle gym. I could tell that he was majorly annoyed, but he hid it from them well. He had two kids on each knee and Saje standing between his legs, asking him questions.

I overheard a few. She asked, "Why are you green?"

He answered, "Why are you white?"

She asked, "Why do you carry those great big forks?"

"I don't trust the ones they have in restaurants."

"Can I try on your hat?" she asked, reaching for his bandanna.

He threw his head back out of her reach. "Maybe later if somebody will take these brats off my lap." He glanced at me hopefully and I averted eye contact.

Mikey loves kids and they seem to love him back. It's true love. But for some reason, Raph can't stand children, but they all love him.

We left eventually and Hiram was pretty mad when he found out that he owed Baby Face Hamato $800. He wrote him an IOU. Don happily drove home in the 1979 Chevy LeSabre that he had just purchased, smiling over his future winnings.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don has the JATO ready, but it's taking him longer to fix up the car. He doesn't want us to drive it and he doesn't have the materials to rig a remote control like on "Mythbusters." I don't think we should let him watch that show anymore.

Leo suggested tying the back axel to something stationary, but that's obviously a really bad idea. So now Don wants to drive it. Ugh.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The welded rack for the JATO canisters is taking a lot longer than he had thought it would so he wants to save time by driving it himself because he won't need to build something for it. He's building a reinforced cage inside like in racecars so that he won't get crushed if he hits something. Still not feeling this.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Got our first look at the car and the "shark cage" as Mikey's been calling it. I think we might actually pull it off.

Raph just pointed out that we need a long, deserted strip of road. Damn. And you know, so much for ninja secrecy and quiet because this thing will be really loud. So we'll probably have to go somewhere outside of the city.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I feel like we're planning the Normandy Invasion. We have maps laid out all over the kitchen table in my apartment, trying to figure out what place would be best. We have Leo on Google maps checking out satellite images to see if the likely locations are paved or whatever. Don wanted to hack into that satellite again, but I whacked him on the back of the head with a magazine.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Found a stretch of road outside of a small town upstate. Looks like we'll have to caravan out there. Let me enumerate the potential problems.

Somebody has to drive the car down there. I also have to drive the van so that I can carry the JATO equipment, plus it has that blasted shark cage and so only one person will fit inside. So Don is most likely going to drive that car. It's a four hour drive and so we'll have to sort of camp out.

The biggest problem is what I'm going to tell Splinter. He's already suspicious that we're up to something. He keeps looking at me with narrowed eyes and twitching whiskers.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey just had the most brilliant idea. If we wait two weeks then we can tell him that we're going away for Labor Day weekend and it'll be true. We don't like to lie to Splinter. That'll give Don some time to work out the kinks. Like the big kink where he dies at the end. But he's determined.

But waiting is going to be really painful.


	30. Chapter 30

_Who are we kidding? Teenage girls would love Mikey. And Katy Perry and Ke$ha seem like the ultimate teen girl music to me. Forgive me, Katy Perry and Ke$ha fans. I mean no disrespect. I think they're fun too. I realize that I keep bringing up music all the time in these stories and that's because I don't watch TV and just listen to music. I made up that honor code. I don't know if it's accurate, but it seems cool. I guess you could say that Raph finally gets the katanas in the 2007 movie, if you want to._

Dear Diary,

Stupid kids. Stupid Mikey, more like. Raph wasn't faultless either, but still… Stupid Mikey.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I was sitting at home listening to that Paramore song over and over again, wondering why nobody loves me and planning to die an old maid when Raph called. He said, "Could you come and get me?"

"Why? Where are you?" Usually when he needs a ride, it means bad news. He can travel almost anywhere by foot. So I feared that he was hurt.

"Well, picking me up isn't the issue. It's Mike." There was a lot of noise in the background.

Instant panic. "Is he okay? What happened?"

"Something more horrific than I can express, April." He gave me the address and I hurried over. He made me promise not to alert anybody else to the situation, so I knew that he was bleeding to death someplace. But wait. If he was hurt, wouldn't he want me to send Don to help?

I was majorly confused and nearly ran three red lights.

I was profoundly confused when I got to the address. A nice house in the suburbs with a white picket fence. I expected the Beaver to run out and greet me. Then I heard Katy Perry playing loudly and saw shadows in the front window and my concern sort of boiled over. It was that stupid Gentry's party! They did go! Insert string of frustrated expletives.

I knocked on the door and Gentry answered. "Where's Raph?" I demanded, ready to shake her.

"Raph, your mom's here!" she yelled upstairs and then abandoned me.

"I am not his mother!" I yelled after her and then remembered that I had a Mother's Day card that claimed the opposite.

Raph was sitting in a bedroom that clearly belonged to a teenage boy, watching an action movie with three or four other guys.

"Hello, son," I said.

"Oh, April!" He was unusually happy to see me. He mouthed, "Get me out of here."

"Where's your brother?"

He froze and didn't respond for a second. So it was that bad.

I asked, "Is he alive?"

He shrugged. Very helpful. "He's in the basement."

The other boys snickered. I wondered if they had noticed that Raph was a big mutated turtle. One of them said, "Hey, Ralph."

"Raph," he said.

"Ever seen 'Transformers?'"

He scurried back to his peer. "Yeah, I love that one. Let's watch it!"

"You've got as long as it takes me to extricate Mikey from whatever he's doing and then we're leaving. And you've seen that about twenty times anyway, so…"

He settled back in with the other boys as I went back down stairs. I fumbled around looking for the basement and heard Mikey's voice coming from downstairs, babbling and the sound of teenage girls giggling.

"…so that's why we call Leo perfect because he learns everything real quick and it takes the rest of us forever. It usually takes Raph longest, but that's because he doesn't really care about learning. Don's real smart, but he likes to learn stuff about machines and computers and communism and stuff. He doesn't like learning his katas. He's a communist, you know. I take longer because I'm stupid."

A girl cooed, "Aw, I don't think you're stupid."

I got to the base of the stairs and found Mike sitting with Gentry and a bunch of older teenage boys and girls. They were playing spin the bottle. There were about fifteen girls down there.

"What are you doing!" That was me.

He didn't have an ounce of shame and jumped clean over Gentry, who squealed, and covered her head. "Hey, did Raph call you? Isn't it great? I've never been to a real party before. We've been listening to music and kissing each other. And the dip is pretty bad. I told them that they should just make their own. It isn't very hard. Onion dip from the store is so salty…"

"What? Huh? What?"

The girls all giggled at each other.

"How many girls have you kissed?" I think my hands and feet went a little numb for a second.

"All of them. And some of them twice. Have you ever had non-alcoholic Sangria? It's pretty good. It tastes like vinegar, sort of, but once you get past the after taste…"

"Why are you kissing girls? Better yet, why are you girls all kissing him? Did you miss something really important when you met him?"

They all giggled at each other. Raph stuck his head cautiously in the door. "Is it safe?"

"How come you didn't want to play?" Mikey asked.

"Would you shut up! We're leaving now!" I grabbed him by the arm.

He pulled away. "No. I don't want to leave yet. I'm still having fun. And who are you to tell me what to do anyway?"

I was just thinking that he was sort of right. It wasn't my place to boss him around, when Raph charged down the stairs, stepped right up to him and yelled, "HEY, SHOW HER A LITTLE RESPECT!"

Mikey didn't back down. "Like you when you nearly beat her to death? That was real respectful of you!"

Raph took a little staggered step backwards.

"Mikey, stop being such a brat and come on," I said. I didn't want to go over this right now.

The girls were whispering excitedly because they thought they were going to see a cool ninja smack down and I was sort of thinking that they were right. Raph turned his shell to us and retreated towards the stairs.

"Yeah, run away! You're really good at that."

"You want me to come back and finish it?" Raph said.

Crap.

"Yeah," Mikey said in a really taunting voice. "And maybe after you beat the shit out of me, you can be all cuddly all of a sudden so that I'll forgive you."

"MICHELANGELO HAMATO!" I felt like that slam was against me.

"Don't they say that's the pattern of abuse? You hurt someone and then go overboard trying to make up for it?"

That set it off. Raph jumped off the stairs, kicked Mikey in the head, and sent him spinning back into the dip table. Oh, well. The dip was bad anyway.

The girls all jumped to get out of their way. I heard some random boy go, "Whoa! This is so cool!"

It was not cool. They duked it out for a few minutes and it felt really surreal because Ke$ha was playing in the background. Raph may be really big, but Mikey's smaller and faster. I was expecting Raph to win, but after a few minutes I realized that Mike was standing with his foot over Raph's throat.

Raph looked him in the eye for a while and then turned his head to the side to avoid eye contact. Mike instantly kicked his sais out of his hands and across the room. He grabbed them off the floor and went upstairs.

It was totally quiet. Everybody was staring at Raph and he finally realized it. He jumped off the ground and looked at everybody. "WHAT ARE YOU ALL STARING AT!"

"Hey, what just happened," I asked. I sort of felt like I'd just watched Mikey castrate him.

"He took my sais. He's on his way home now." He was walking really slowly and hunched over.

"Why? How do you know?"

"He's going to give them to Splinter. And then I'll have to apologize to him."

"Why? You didn't do anything." For once, he hadn't done anything.

"That's how we do things. He defeated me and now I have to go back and be humble."

We were outside of the house now, headed towards the van. We didn't talk much and he just looked out the window most of the time. I was so mad at Mike.

"It's not true, you know. What he said."

I can see how he could view the situation that way, but still. Raph didn't answer.

"And I think that weapon stealing thing is a stupid system," I said, trying to be comforting.

"It's based on honor."

"Do you and Leo take each other's weapons?" They must do it at least once a week with how much they fight.

He laughed. "Leo takes my weapons. I've never gotten his before."

I still think it's a stupid system, but whatever. I'm not a ninja.

"So this was all some kind of macho pissing contest?" I said. He was quiet again. "Did you know that he kissed about fifteen girls?"

"Why do you think I was upstairs?" He was at least smiling now. "He's a little Romeo, isn't he? But I think his career as a ladies' man is at an end."

"Why didn't you join in?" I was really curious.

"I don't have lips, for one thing," he said. "And girls…" He shivered. "They were just making fun of us anyway."

I didn't think that fifteen girls making out with his brother repeatedly was a sign of disrespect, but I'm not Raph.

We got back to the lair and I was really dreading what would happen. Leo and Don were whispering in their room and stopped as soon as they heard the door. I was inclined to flee, but Leo grabbed me and said that I should stay. He sat me on the couch with Don. Raph went into the dojo with Splinter and Mikey and we could hear everything they said, which wasn't much. Leo couldn't keep himself from hovering close to them, listening with his arms crossed.

Splinter said, "Raphael, your brother has brought me your weapons," he said, sighing. "Again." I restrained a laugh for some reason. It was one of those things that shouldn't be funny, but was anyway. "You know that he has stripped you of your honor and I expect you to show deference to him."

It was quiet. Leo seemed to be counting the seconds.

"Michelangelo," Raph said, in a really stiff and flat voice. I think he's given this speech many times before. "I apologize for the wrongs that I have committed against you and I request that you return my weapons to me."

There was a pause and metal clanking as he handed them over. And Raph left the dojo and took off. Mikey left the dojo and hid in his bedroom.

"Mikey kissed fifteen girls tonight," I said loudly, so that Splinter, Don and Leo could hear me.

"What?" Leo said, surprised out his brotherly concern.

"Way to go, Mikey," Don said to himself. He was holding the JATO rack in his lap like it was first born son.

"Gonna sleep with that thing tonight?" Leo asked, yawning.

"Maybe?" He clutched it to his chest dramatically.

Splinter went to the kitchen and put a tea kettle on the stove. "These boys," he muttered to himself. "They'll be the death of me."

To make ourselves feel better, me, Splinter, Don and Leo all played Monopoly. Don won, pointed at us all and said, "I own you!"

I wonder if Raph will get home in time to go with us to set off the JATO. He only has a week to brood and then he'd better get his angsty ass back home.


	31. Chapter 31

_I feel kind of guilty making fun of Enigma since I'm a big fan of theirs, but I don't think April would like it. That thing about the truck vs. LeSabre actually happened. But it was my mother behind the wheel of the LeSabre. She's a feisty woman. I won't give away what this pertains to, but my friend described one of her roommates as a slutty virgin and that made me laugh, so…_

Dear Diary,

The day has come. We're going to go up north to set off the JATO. I could jizz myself, I'm so excited. But Raph still isn't home. Hope he's not dead somewhere. Guess he'll miss it. That kind of stinks because we were going to do it on his birthday originally and it feels kind of wrong that he won't be there. If he comes home by 7pm tonight, then he can make it. If not, we aren't waiting up.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph didn't make it and now we're on our way. We're going to an abandoned airstrip in the middle of nowhere, four hours north of here. Leo's driving my van and we have Mikey with us. Don has to drive the LeSabre by himself. Thankfully, we still have the walkie-talkies in case we get separated on the road.

I should record a funny thing I saw before we left. When I got to the lair, I looked around for Splinter because I wanted to give him his hug goodbye and I found Mikey sitting at the kitchen table with a mound of food. He was packing up our food since we'll be out there all weekend. We're sort of camping again, I guess. But he was packing the food in the cooler boxes with one hand and eating a sandwich and making a face with the other.

"What are you eating?" I asked.

"Raph's food," he choked. "If we don't eat it and it goes bad by the time he comes home then he'll go, 'Why didn't you eat this food! I spent good money on this! Maybe I won't buy any food from now on and I'll just let you guys rummage through the dumpsters again!'"

"But doesn't he eat really gross stuff?"

Mikey forced a swallow. He nodded. I have a feeling that it was some kind of self-imposed penance.

We've been listening to Leo's Enigma CD's the whole way. They're not that bad, I guess. Very restful, in a kinky way. But they make me want to sleep. I don't know how they're keeping him awake. I dozed off a while back and had a dream that there was a girl in the backseat having an asthma attack. Then I woke up and realized that all the heavy breathing was on the CD.

Mikey was manning the walkie-talkie and kept buzzing Don in the other car. After an hour of being buzzed to tell him that he should change his name to Amanda and wear skirts (?), he said to Mike, "You know, I can't really drive and talk into this so. Please, do shut up."

When we were still in the city and I could see Don back at last stop light. There was a Dodge Dakota, which is a tiny little truck, sitting in the next lane. They were pointing at his maroon 1979 Buick LeSabre. It didn't help that it had a big welded rack on top and bars inside. So they were clearly pointing and laughing and I said to him on the walkie-talkie, "Those punks in the next car are laughing at your ride, Don."

He said back, "Well, they're in a four cylinder. And I'm in an eight."

We sat at the light for about 10 more seconds and I had forgotten the exchange. His light turned green and he stepped down as hard as he could on the gas and he was on our bumped at the next light before the Dakota could even get through the intersection. So that was great. They passed us a little while later and flipped him off. I know he doesn't have a middle finger, so when they passed us I rolled down the window and flipped them off for him. Leo was very unhappy with me.

Mikey slept the second half of the way. He was complaining that his throat hurt and I think he's getting sick. Serves him right.

So I talked to Leo most of the time. I asked him if the sexually tilted mood of his music was some kind of statement on his forced abstinence. He wasn't as awkward about it as I thought he would be, but his explanation still doesn't make any sense to me. It had something to do with Taoism and moderation and the biological need to preserve the male sexual life force. But Taoists believe that a man can lose his life force if he has sex too much, but if he has sex with a woman it makes it stronger? I don't know. The only thing I can gather from it is that while he can't do it, it doesn't mean that he can't think about it a lot. His speeches are the kind where they make a lot sense when he's talking and then when you try to explain what he said to somebody else, then it doesn't make any sense at all and you can't even remember what he was trying to say. Probably because he'll spend a whole ten minutes verbally dissecting a really abstract idea that could have been summed up in one sentence.

"Well, maybe you should have taught that philosophy to Mikey," I muttered. His philosophy about abstinence, not about being verbose.

"Think he'll get cold sores?" he asked, kind of hopefully.

"Maybe." We can only hope. None of us are very happy with him right now and we all miss Raph. We've been blaming him outright. I think he's heard, "It's your fault that he's gone," about once a day.

Mikey sat up and said, "I don't see why you're into that Chinese Zen porn."

I thought that was a good way to describe it.

"It's educational," Leo said, gripping the steering wheel tighter under scrutiny. "I'm trying to be a leader and a skilled warrior. I have to be able to control everything. So I have to… Oh, shut up."

"I'd think that having no available women in your species would have helped with that," Don chimed in on the walkie-talkie. "Maybe Raph's right and you do jack off a lot."

Leo grabbed the walkie-talkie from Mike and turned it off. Mikey was too tired to laugh at him and just lay down and went back to sleep.

"Don't worry about it," I said. "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. I totally get it. I'd like to read your book about it. It sounds interesting."

So now that I think of it, we talked about sex for two hours, but neither of us were embarrassed about it. I'm becoming a truly enlightened woman.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We finally got to the landing strip and guess what? Raph was waiting for us. Johnny No Thumbs let him borrow the sandwich van. So he drove that stupid thing all the way upstate with the sandwich on top. He said he had it playing "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" on the highway.

So Johnny has decided to upgrade his operation from just a sandwich van to a taco stand. It plays "La Cucaracha" and "The Mexican Hat Dance."

Leo didn't seem that surprised. He was happy though because he was smiling like an idiot and they started wrestling as soon they got close to each other. That's boy love. Beat it out of each other. Don was too distracted with checking the surface of the landing strip to notice that he was there.

"Where's Mike?" Raph asked, looking around.

I explained that he was asleep and he didn't feel very well. I think he's forgiven him because he seemed genuinely sad for him and then got in my van to try and wake him up. Sounded like he was trying to sweet talk him into getting up. But it didn't work.

We made a fire and this time Don had brought enough explosives that he made us all jump fifteen feet away when he ignited the fire. It was a blazing bonfire.

"Good thing we're away from the highway," Raph said, fanning the billowing black smoke away from his face.

"I think the smoke might give us away though." Leo is always thinking about secrecy and rightly so. "I have that book with me, April."

Raph was preparing the s'mores. He'd told Mike that if he woke up he could have a s'more, so he had to make them. "What book?"

"_Taoist Sexual Practice_," Leo muttered, so that I could barely hear him.

"Ah, you too can gain immortality with these simple sexual practices," Raph said in a silly voice as he distractedly tried to keep his marshmallows from blowing away. "I'm of a strictly Confucian view of the topic. Sex bad."

"That's a good view," I said, laughing. I knew Leo was winding up for another lengthy philosophical debate on the matter, but thankfully Mikey wandered out of the van, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"Can I have a s'more?" He sounded like a sad six year old.

"Not yet, kid," Raph said. I couldn't believe how nice he was being too him. "Want me to roast your stuff for you?"

He nodded and sat down heavily. Before long he was curled up on the ground asleep.

Don ran over and stayed by the fire long enough to roast a marshmallow before scurrying back to his Frankenstein's monster. As he stood at the fire he looked over, saw Raph and started. He said, "When did you get here?"

"Three hours ago. What? Did you leave your brain back home? I drove the sandwich van."

Don looked around for it like he hadn't noticed it before. "So, I think Mikey has mono," he said randomly.

I had been drinking a juice box and choked. Leo's eyes got really wide. "Good," I said as I wiped my chin clean.

"He's a perfect example of my Confucian beliefs," Raph smirked at me as he went back the sandwich van to rummage for more of the campfire food that he'd brought.

"He's been punished by the gods," Don said in his sarcastic voice.

Leo looked horrified. "Mikey has a venereal disease. How are we going to explain this to Splinter?"

"Wait, it's not a venereal disease. You can get it from non-venereal contact," I said, not wanting to give Splinter anything to worry about that he didn't have to. "So if you guys all share the same cup with him, then you guys…"

Oops, they all share the same cups and bottles all the time. Don and Leo sighed really heavily, thinking they were both going to get an STD from their brother. Poor kids. I worked hard for a long time and finally convinced them that it wasn't like they were all spreading Syphilis around or anything. Mono is different.

Raph came back from the van with his arms loaded with food, humming that annoying Ke$ha song that he and Mikey had had their smack down to, oblivious of what we'd been talking about. I didn't mention it to him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We slept in the tent again. Wasn't as bad as last time. There was more room, but that's probably because Mikey wouldn't wake up to get in the tent and slept on the ground all night.

We're doing the JATO today! Hallelujah. With all this buildup, it had better be the coolest thing I've ever seen.

After Raph's disappeared he usually comes home firing his charisma on all cylinders. He has the kind of charisma that can blast you through a brick wall. So he's been totally gracious and friendly and witty and all kinds of positivity, but within a few days he'll go back to normal and start yelling and growling at us all again. Better savor it while it lasts. He roasted about two dozen hot dogs and didn't complain at all when we didn't eat many. Mike's too sick to eat.

I took a peak at the Taoist sex book and it makes even less sense than Leo did when he described it. It's not smutty or anything, but it's just far above my head.

* * *

Dear Diary,

So we just set off the JATO.

We put the car at one end of the runway and then spent a few hours trying to move the other cars and stuff out of the way in case he rolled the car. Raph kept saying that he couldn't let Don crash into the sandwich van because it was on loan from the mob. Like he needed to remind me.

There was a lot of agonizing preparation. Mostly we all stood really far away with one of the walkie-talkies and watched while Don ran around the car fixing and checking and aligning things. Leo had other walkie-talkie and he was summoned a few times and then sent back with the rest of the leper colony.

Mikey was sitting on one of the cooler boxes. He has a mild fever and he looks awful. Then Raph said, "He's ready. He's coming back over here."

We waited while Don walked back to us from the LeSabre. He gave a little speech that went, "Now, I'm ready to go. If it explodes upon detonation… Then I'll, like, die. And that would suck. But it probably won't. I don't think it will go over 150mph. But I'm hoping that it doesn't spin out or crash. I don't know how we would get it home."

I was about to raise the point that getting the car home would be the least of his problems because he'd probably be maimed or dead, but held my tongue.

"Any last words?" Leo asked.

Don raised both his hands in the air and said, "¡Viva la revolución!" I think he's heard the rumor that he's a communist.

As he went back to the car to fire it up, Raph said to Leo, "What do we do if it does die?"

"We'll tell Splinter he said that he loves us all, I guess."

Then they all laughed. I didn't laugh.

Don got in the car and I had a fleeting urge to grab the walkie-talkie away from Leo and yell, "Don't do it!"

But I didn't. Before I could prepare myself for the fact that he could get really dead doing this, he was driving the LeSabre down the runway and speeding up. Raph was chanting something and Leo was holding the walkie-talkie against his head. Then he fired the JATO and I swear it was the loudest thing I've ever heard. That and Raph screaming like a maniac in my ear next to me.

Leo laughed suddenly. Don had said something into the walkie-talkie, but I couldn't hear it.

It was sort of like watching a cartoon where a car takes off really fast. It just accelerated at an almost idiotic speed, leaving a vapor trail behind it. And then before I could even register that he was going faster than I've ever seen a car drive, he was hammering on the breaks and slowing down.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Leo said into the walkie-talkie.

He was at the end of the runway within twenty seconds of igniting the JATO. But still, it was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

"Wow, that was cool," Mike said weakly from the ground.

As the car stopped, Don tumbled out of the car door, laughing hysterically, and just laid there on his face. Raph and Leo ran out to slap him on the back and jump up and down. I ran panting behind them and then I heard this forlorn voice behind me say, "Hey, everybody, wait! I can't run!" Mike was lagging way behind us.

So I stopped and waited for him. "Feeling okay?" I asked.

"I'm being punished," he said.

We eventually got out to the car where the other three were still yelling and running around.

"I can't believe I said that," Don said, pulling the empty JATO rocket from the rack on top of the car.

"I'll clean your mouth out with soap when we get home," Leo said, laughing. "And good job. You didn't die. That's always the mark of a good ninja."

So, Don lived. JATO fired. It all worked out. I still can't believe it.


	32. Chapter 32

_I took osteology in college and would really love to have a human skeleton. Just some short silliness._

Dear Diary,

I'm sitting in the wilderness looking at my voicemail. Just noticed that I have too many voicemail messages saved on my phone and have to delete some. But the choice is too hard. Here are some of the best.

Raph: _This is Mikey's phone. He dropped mine in the toilet this morning. Think I should blow dry it? Would that melt the circuits? I don't want to ask Don because he'll give me a look._

Leo: _yumeji ni wa  
ashi mo yasumezu  
kayoedomo  
utsutsu ni hitome  
mishigoto wa arazu_

_Would you buy me more Pepsi? Thanks._

That's a Japanese love poem. In English it goes:

Though I go to you  
ceaselessly along dream paths,  
the sum of those trysts  
is less than a single glimpse  
granted in the waking world.

I got all swoony until I remembered who sent it. The little slut. Flirts to get what he wants out of me. But it works. I've got your number, Turtle Boy.

And of course we have the Mikey is Lost Series:

Mikey: _April, I parked your van and now I can't find it. Sorry._

Mikey: _I'm in Queens and don't know where I am. Come and get me._

Mikey: _Your place isn't near 3rd__street and Delaware Avenue right? Because I'm totally fucked if it isn't._

That's in a different burrough by the way.

Then we have the Raph Drunk Dialing Series:

Raph: _I wanted to call you to say that I totally love you and there's a tank here in front of the VFW and I'm going to sit on it. I would take a picture, but I don't have a camera._

Raph: _Were we supposed to spar tonight? I'm so wasted that I can't stand. What was that a dog!_

Raph: _False alarm. It was a big cat. I wish my name was Steve. Then spell checker wouldn't want to change it all the time._

Raph: _I'm going to carve my name on this light pole._

So, yeah. Not much to explain there. Oh, and a Drunk Raph Texting:

_I'm gonna cop me one of those._

And attached was a picture of a majestic horse.

Don: (fighting in the background) _So we're sort of getting attacked right now and that's Leo yelling. I was just wondering how you're doing. I'll come over and we can watch "Moulin Rouge" later. Bye._

Don: _I think this thing is, like, you know, going to kill us all soon. So bye._

Leo: _Mikey just threw up in your van. I'm so sorry. I'll clean it up._

_Leo: We're coming in an hour… Raph, cut it out! We're coming… Mike, that isn't food. I have the movies and… No, Master Splinter, but I'll get it done tomorrow. Wait, Raph, come back and carry this. I thought you'd like… Don, I'm not telling you again. Fine, I'm an asswipe. I'll live with it. No, just take the blue one. Raph, that meat's spoiled. What, Mike? I'll call you back, April._

Leo: _Okay, I'm bringing "Hellboy" and Mikey's bringing the stuff for dinner. Raph, I said that we'll do that tomorrow. I have only have two hands. Well, put it up on the shelf. Ask Master Splinter what to do with it then. Don took it in the lab. No, I don't know why. Mikey, give me your phone. I want to check something. "Hellboy"'s really good. I think you'll like it. And Mike's making… no, I did that last Thursday. Why, is it off? I can't hold that too! I already have my hands full. Take it yourself! I'll call you back._

I have no idea what they were all doing.

Gentry: _Hey, is this April O'Neil? I'm Gentry Harris. I got your number out of the phone book and I was wondering what was going on with you. So how's Leo? Is he mad at me because he won't answer my calls? Okay, so I'll see you around. Bye._

Gentry: _Hey, this is Gentry. Is Raph there? He hung up on me. Could you tell him that I think he's really cool and it would be real cool if we could hang out? Aren't his fork things awesome? Anyway, bye._

_

* * *

_

Dear Diary,

So now shamed and humiliated with myself. Leo played a message from me on his phone that went:

Me: _Did you back over a fire hydrant with my van! You stupid mutant!_

Raph said that he has messages from me saved on his phone, but he refused to play them. I think they're the messages where I call him crying, asking him to come home.

Mikey had a few funny messages saved. The first was from me.

Me: _Hey, Hugh Heffner called and wondered if you wanted to hang out with him at the Playboy Mansion. He heard that you're turning into a big whore._

Ah, that one still makes me laugh. And Don played what he claims is the first phone message I left for any of them. It went like this:

Me: _So, this is April O'Neil. I don't know if you remember me, but you guys saved me from the mousers and Baxter Stockman. And I have to apologize for that again. You know, I'm real sorry that those things tried to eat your dad. Anyway, I don't really know if you want me calling… Well, you gave me your number. Why wouldn't you? I was just wondering how you're all doing and I want you to know that if you need anything, I'll gladly help. It's the least I can do. I mean I don't have much I can… But whatever. And don't think I'm weirded out by you guys. Well, I am a little but… You guys are freaking turtles that talk. Anyway, have a good day._(awkward pause)_Bye._

That fateful phone call. They all took my offer to heart because they moved in later that day.

Don said, "You were so young and innocent then. And then we corrupted and warped your impressionable mind. You sent this to me last week."

Me: _Do you have enough jet fuel? I don't know what you need to make more. If you do, then tell me what to get. And you're going to have to stop using my Visa card because it was flagged. Leo was buying shurikens and they found it suspicious. My credit isn't as good as it should be, so I don't know if I can get a new one. Maybe Raph can get them through Johnny No Thumbs. I don't know if the mob deals in Asian weaponry though. But you never know. And did you buy a human skeleton because I just got one in the mail? I thought it was illegal, but I guess not._

He did buy a skeleton. He wanted it for anatomical reasons. I told him to just buy a book, but having a skeleton is so much cooler. He's going to articulate it and name it Mr. Bones. Raph is going to let Mr. Bones wear his coon skin cap.

We're heading back home tomorrow.


	33. Chapter 33

_I was just thinking today that there are so many things that we take for granted that would be a danger to the boys. Like cops. Cops are the good guys right? Not when you can't be seen by anybody.__ There is a religious joke in here and it is meant to reflect Mikey's extremely limited view of religion in general, or else his willingness to make exaggerated claims about outside society for the sake of a laugh. _

Dear Diary,

I write this as Raph tries to tell us all a scary story. He's holding one of the flashlights under his chin, trying to look scary. He looks silly when he tries. He can be scary all on his. But I like him better when he looks like a doofus, obviously.

Story has something to do with a dog with three legs. The dog is mad at its owner. Oh, the owner cut off its leg. Mikey is asleep, otherwise he would have called Raph names for that. He's a big animal rights person. Owner is possessed now. So possessed pet owner cuts off dog's leg and now it haunts… a Laundromat. Oh, scary Laundromat.

Don just asked why. Says owner put the dog in one of the driers and killed it. Don asked if the attendant was in the bathroom and didn't notice one of the customers putting a dog in a machine. He says possessed owner killed the attendant. Leo asks if there were other customers. No, they were dead too. Obviously, guys. Get with it. I just asked him to tell a love story instead.

Holy, crap. He's going to do it. Okay. A pretty girl named Mary Sue goes to school. She's pretty and wonderful. He just described a Stepford Wife, actually. She's sixteen. Big shock. Then she goes to school and meets a guy who's really odd. But she's got the hots for him. This sounds familiar. Don says it's "Twilight." How does he even know what that is?

He's watched "Twilight!" HAHAHA.

Said it was boring. Sure.

Dear Diary,

Turned out that Mikey had rented it and they'd watched it together so it took the edge off the teasing.

Going home now. I'm taking Mikey with me in my van. Don has to drive the LeSabre. Leo and Raph are going in the sandwich truck. They need some buddy time, I guess.

I think I'm getting poison ivy. Leo thinks he's getting it too. We've been using the facilities in roughly the same area.

Dear Diary,

I'm writing this from home, so I can take a little more time and do it right.

The ride home was dull at first. Mikey's sleepy and headachy and not very good company nowadays. And it turns out that he whines triple time when he's sick. But I don't think the others help. They just baby him and do everything for him. I understand that he's cute. But come on. He's almost sixteen. They always complain about how he's such a bratty little brother. But you know what? He wouldn't act like that if they didn't treat him that way.

I was hoping that he would ride alone with me because I wanted talk to him. I was still unhappy with how he had treated Raph. I don't care if it is part of the ninja code to humiliate people publicly. I was going to tell him what I think about it.

When we got in the car, he turned the radio on and Enigma started playing. I said, "Leo forgot his sexy music."

"Raph won't let him play it around him anyway," he said, popping out the CD and changing the channels. He's a channel changer. As soon as he's heard half a song, he has to flip around to hear what else is on.

It was dark because they only drive at night and plus it was pouring rain. I could barely see what I was looking at. "Do you think Don and Leo can handle driving in this?"

He shrugged. I was tempted to pull over. I was only going about thirty for a long time.

Then he said, out of nowhere, "I'm going to kill whoever poisoned Raph."

"Don't say that." I didn't want him to talk about when I was afraid of crashing the van. I wanted to talk about it. Just when I was in more control of my faculties.

"Why not? Raph does that kind of thing all the time."

"Well, he's not you. I thought you weren't into the whole ninja vengeance thing. At least I thought so up until lately."

I wished that there was lightning. Then I could at least see the road for a second. "Get on the radio and ring Don for me," I said, motioning to the walkie-talkie.

Mikey reached into the back and buzzed Don. He didn't answer.

"Probably too busy concentrating," I said. "I wish we had one of these in the sandwich van. Oh, call Raph, will you."

He pulled out his phone and dutifully called Raph. He said, "Yeah, April's worried that you guys are in a ditch someplace… No, we're fine… Don didn't answer… Is it letting up ahead? Maybe we should start singing that little kids song about Noah's Ark. Does the sandwich truck play it? Cool. Bye." He hung up and put his phone away. "Yeah, they're okay. Leo's a good Zen driver."

"He's Zen everything."

"Can you imagine if he was human?" Mikey asked, a hint of his usual mischief coming into his voice. "He'd run a world class dojo. He'd be a big humanitarian. He'd have a harem of wives."

"A harem? I think he'd be a one woman family man with twelve kids."

"So many women would want him that he'd have to join the Mormons. That's right!" He laughed and shifted excitedly in his seat. "He'd join the Mormon church so that he could have lots of wives and he'd be the head of a compound of ninja fighting Mormon women and he'd have over one hundred children and they would all be named variations of Leonardo. And then he'd have to move them all to a private island because of population problems and he'd declare Splinter King of the Leonardoites."

I wasn't really listening to his babbling. I said, "I want to talk about what happened two weeks ago with Raph."

He shut up. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Well, I do. How could say that to him? You know he's always on the verge of a mental breakdown at the best of times. You had to give him that little push over the edge."

"And why not?" he said, in a childish voice. "Everybody's always so worried about him and his precious feelings all the time. It isn't right. I get mad too, but I would never beat you up. Even if I was drugged. I'd rather die."

The walkie-talkie buzzed us and Mikey stopped his speech to answer. "What's up, Rocket Man?"

"I…" he sounded sort of hazy. I assumed he'd somehow bought some liquor on the way home and was drunk. I was going to skin his green ass. "I'll let you know. Hold on."

I knew that if I let him have a conversation with Don that he'd pretend to forget what we'd been talking about and I wanted to skip right to the point. "Well, when you said that stuff about how he cuddled me and I forgave him and he's just like an abuser, that was really out of line. I'm an adult and it's none of your business how or why I forgive people. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said. I felt very bad now. He's never called me ma'am before. "But you spend so much time with him. Sometimes I think you like him better than us."

"Like him better?" I scratched my head and then grabbed the steering wheel again because the brief abatement in the rain had gone away and was pouring again. "I love you all the same. You guys just need different things from me. Raph's… just a big mama's boy with no mama. He needs more time with me than you guys do."

He smiled slightly. "So you have to spend more time with him because he's so maladjusted?"

"I'm a manner of speaking."

"I think I can live with that." He picked up the walkie-talkie again. "Hey, Rocket Man. You there? What's the sitch?"

"Mikey?" He sounded really baffled.

"No, this is Gloria Estefan," he said. "I wanted to know if you could remind me what the lyrics are to 'Rhythm is Going to Get You.'"

"You guys… I hit something…"

I immediately pulled over for fear of hitting something myself.

"Hit what?" Mikey asked. He didn't answer. Mikey buzzed him again. "Hit what? Where are you?"

"Um… I think I hit the railing. No, somebody hit me. And they're gone. I hit a railing though. It's raining… I don't know where I am."

"If he's behind us…" I said to Mikey.

He got the point right away. "What mile marker can you see?"

He didn't answer again. Mikey buzzed him yet again. "Stay awake. Did you hit your head?"

"I don't remember. What did you say?"

"What mile marker are you next to? Do you see one?"

Pause. Mikey was about to buzz him again when he answered, "I don't see anything. The headlights aren't working. Should I get out?"

"No!" Mikey said. "Just stay where you are. Do you remember what exit you went by last?"

"Seventeen B," he said. "I was thinking about getting off and taking a pit stop but I didn't. Wish I had. Guys, I think I hit my head. I'm most definitely concussed here. Whose car is this?"

"It's yours, man. Don't worry. We're coming to get you."

Mikey talked to Don to keep him awake and focused while we headed down there. We had about seven or eight exits to go until we got close to him.

But then a new problem came up. Mikey said, "What's the sound in the background? Sounds like a whistle?"

Pause. "It's a cop. Somebody must have called it in."

"Quick! Get out of there! Can you move?" Mike said.

"I guess. I have to cross the lanes to get into the trees. He'll see me in…"

Mikey yelled urgently into the walkie-talkie. "Just get out of there!"

So it was quiet for a while and we didn't hear anything from him for about ten minutes. Mikey didn't seem that worried. I had that gnawing panic in my stomach that makes you age. I'm sure it puts a wrinkle on my face every time.

But somehow we got to the crash site just as Don buzzed us back. I realize now that he either saw the headlights or he recognized the sound of the engine. "So, I'm hiding in the trees. Quit pulling up!"

I slammed on the breaks.

"Open the door. I'm getting in. Wait a minute. Mikey get out and come to me."

"What for?" he asked. I know he doesn't like being out in the rain. And I knew that it was cold rain and I understood how he felt.

Don's voice was quiet and muffled like he was covering the walkie-talkie. "Because they'll look in the van and they might even search it because they're out here looking for me. They think I'm a drunk driver. April, just go through the check point and stop…"

"We'll wait for you at mile 252," Mikey said to me. He opened the door and hopped out before I could say anything to him.

It felt like being abandoned. And Don was right. The cops had seen me stop and checked the van. I turned the heater on full blast in preparation for them. I realized that they would both be freezing, wet, Mikey is sick as a dog and Don has a head injury.

I was really panicked when I drove past the LeSabre and even braked for a second. It was in the left lane, mashed into the railing. It looked like somebody came up from behind him in the right lane, clipped his right bumper and sent him into the guard rail. It's a good thing that he had the shark cage because I think he would have been creamed otherwise.

The 252 mile marker was a little further up than I thought, but that was good. It was far enough away from the crash scene than I had thought. But I got there eventually. They were already waiting for me and I can't believe that they both ran that whole way. As soon as Don got in the car, he pulled a bunch of blankets out of the back and handed one to Mikey. They were both wet and shivering.

Don's face was sort of bloodied up from where he hit the shark cage. "You okay?" I asked.

"Fine," he shivered through chattering teeth.

That wasn't good enough and I had to climb into the back to see him in one piece. I admit that I fawned all over him. I'm a girl so it's allowed. And he doesn't really mind.

"Anything broken?" I asked after I finally let go of him.

"I don't think so. I guess not."

Mikey was curled up into a ball in the front seat. "I want to go home," he said in a really pathetic voice.

So I got my two sad charges to the lair and Splinter wasn't happy to see them in that shape, but he wasn't surprised either. He made them both tea and lectured Mikey on having respect for his body and stuff. Because he got mono from the girls.

Leo and Raph got home and they were in really good spirits. Leo saw them and flipped out, waving his arms around and going, "What happened? Are you both okay? Who did this?" Looking back on it, I think they were both tipsy. And now I feel the urge to skin Leo's green ass. He was driving too.

"I think we know who did it to Mikey," Raph muttered as he went into this room.

So Leo hovered around and then after the initial panic wore off he heaved a sigh and said, "Too bad that the LeSabre was wrecked. I thought it would be cool to have a car of our own."

Master Splinter was bandaging Don's face and said, "Obviously it was not meant to be."

"LeSabre?" Don said. "We've never had a LeSabre."

"That's normal," I said, like none of them have ever had concussions before. "He has a concussion. Memory problems. It should go away in a few weeks."

Raph yelled from his bedroom, "So Mikey has mono and Don won't be able to remember who we are for months? How come we're the ones who are always punished when they act up? It's karma, isn't it? I must have been pretty despicable in a past life to deserve this."

Dear Diary,

Mikey's taking it easy. Mostly tired. Don's having a harder time. He's been kind of irritable and he can't remember what he's doing and he goes crazy when he hears a loud noise. Leo said it's like he's adapting to Raph's personality.

We found out the next day that Leo and Raph went under an overpass with really low clearance and knocked the big plastic sandwich off the top of the truck.

Raph was pretty disappointed when he heard Don's story. I think he was expecting some cops to get laid out. Leo said that Don and Mikey handled the situation well and that he was proud of them. Well, until I told him that Mikey thinks that someday he'll have a harem of ninja fighting Mormon wives and hundreds of children living on a tropical island with King Splinter of the Leonardoites. He wasn't too proud of that.

Me and Leo spent the greater part of this week sitting on the couch in my apartment covering each other in calamine lotion. We're both very allergic. He has mental exercises to block out the itching. But I don't.

And Leo just told me that he and Raph got home early and hid out in one of the tunnels and had a drink together. So, whew. No drinking and driving.

But an awful idea snuck up on me today. Somebody hit our Don and didn't even stop to see if he was alive or dead. And we're all actually grateful for it. I mean, Mikey just assumed that nobody stopped. But I've been wondering. What if they did stop? What if they saw him and took off. That's what makes me sad.


	34. Chapter 34

_I just love Johnny No Thumbs. I think I like Gina Basso now too. I wonder why they never meet anybody nice. I think it's a tossup between what would tempt a sixteen year old boy more. Food or violence. _

Dear Diary,

I can now tell my grandchildren that I was a part of the Great Taco War of 2010.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Okay. Here's what happened.

Oh, before that.

Don's getting better. He still keeps sitting in the dark like a vampire and asking us who we are, but he'd just doing that to piss off Raph. Raph's a little more hypersensitive to brain injury and mental health issues than he is normally because of his drug induced frenzy. I can see why that would bother him.

Anyway, Don's been faking amnesia and Mike just sleeps all the time. No progress with the mono. He's the same. I told him that he could have it for more than a year and he burst into tears. He and Don spend all their time cuddled on the couch together. The two invalids. And Leo waits on them like he's the maid. Raph did at first, but his patience wore off and now he spends most of his time at home going, "GET IT YOURSELF!" They're so cute. They're all balled up under a blanket together, asleep right now. Leo's in the kitchen scratching his poison ivy. He's supposed to be the one with all the self-control. I don't itch mine that much. He looks really funny. Green with pink patches.

I came over to convince Master Splinter to get a cell phone. He still refuses. He's wary of them for some reason. He said that they remind him of witchcraft. I'll get him into the 21st century if it kills me. The boys don't want him to have one because it would mean a little less freedom.

Now, on to the Great Taco War of 2010. That's what Raph calls it. And yes, it was all Raph's fault. Well, Leo was to blame too, I guess. Anyway…

It all started when Leo drove under the low hanging overpass and knocked the sandwich off the top of the sandwich truck. Raph returned it to Johnny the next day.

But Johnny was furious with him because he said he had cost him his pride. He could never drive a sandwich van that didn't have a sandwich on top. He would be the laughing stock of the Cosa Nostra Sandwich Division. Raph argued that it shouldn't matter since he had recently transferred to the Cosa Nostra Taco Division. Johnny said it was a matter of family pride and not practicality. Then he ordered Raph to buy it from him. Well, Raph refused outright. He said later that he sort of was thinking about buying it, but refused on principle. Contrariness is more like.

So then Johnny says to him, "I will have vengeance upon your household."

And Raph said that he punched him in the face and went home. Just an average day in the life of Hamato Raphael. Punching mob bosses in the face.

Well, I was at home later that night and I heard somebody knocking on the door. Nowadays I just assume that it's one of the boys, so I through the door wide open. And who should I see but Johnny No Thumbs, Bald Tony and Zippo the Sicilian. Oh, and Bald Tony and Zippo were both pointing handguns at me. Just to add some realistic color to the situation.

"Are you April O'Neil?" Johnny asked.

"You've met me, like, six times. You know I'm April O'Neil," I said. Johnny's a pretty ridiculous guy and it's hard not to argue with him, even when he does have guns in your face.

"Oh," he said in a funny pretend-polite voice. "Is your husband Raphael at home?" He craned his neck around me to see.

"No, my husband isn't at home." I pulled the door shut behind me. I had my dirty underwear laying all over the room. "What do you need?" Like I couldn't figure that out from the big guns in my face.

"Oh, I was hoping to see him. But he loves you a lot right?"

Not a good question. Not a very coherent question either. "Yeah, I guess."

"And he'd go crazy if you were held hostage, right?"

Face palm. Yeah, crazy is a word for it. Psychotic is another. "Yeah, I guess so. But you know that we have a bad sex life remember? So, he might be glad that I'm gone. He could hook up with that fat lady at the carnival."

"Where's your kid?" Bald Tony asked. I flinched. I've never heard him talk before.

"Our kid?" We pretended that we had a baby once during a rescue operation. "We gave her away."

"Good choice," Johnny said. "I'd give mine away, but I need them as bargaining chips in case my business goes south. Do it, Zippo."

Zippo chloroformed me. I can't believe I was chloroformed. It was like a bad 80's movie.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I had to stop writing so that I could cook dinner with Splinter. Cooking with Splinter is like being on an old world cooking show.

Well, Back to the Great Taco War of 2010. I woke up in a strange bed in a strange house with Mrs. No Thumbs looking at me. She's a short woman with hair so bleached that it looks like it would crack and break off if you touched it and she's really tan. More like baked.

"You're awake, sweetie," she said. "You were asleep for a long time. I always tell Johnny not to use so much of it. But does he ever listen? I made some manicotti for dinner and then I'm having some girls over for an Avon party and you're welcome to sit in if you like."

It was sort of like being a house guest with the Sopranos. So I sat at the dinner table with their kids eating a nice Italian dinner while Tony and Zippo stood near the table, guns at the ready.

Johnny has three kids. The oldest is a boy who's about Raph's age. He looks all punked out, like he spends all his time moshing. He has a preteen daughter. Not much to say about her besides that she's 12 and wears more makeup than I do. And the little boy was really naughty and kept crying all the time. Johnny kept trying to be the authoritative father and ordering them to eat, shut up, don't do that and they would just tell him to go do something to himself.

So I sat in on the Avon party, all the time looking at the windows, ready for the green cavalry to arrive. I figured Raph would smash through a window at any time and take them all out and then look around and go, "Oops."

I bought a lipstick and some cleanser.

After half an hour, the doorbell rang. The son, Joseph, answered the door. "Yeah, is this Johnny No Thumbs' house?" It was Raph. Hallelujah. I was saved. Why did he ring the doorbell?

Joseph answered with a grunt. He came in the living room to tell his mother, "That green freak who hangs around with dad is here."

I saw Raph follow Joseph in the room and he had the distinct look of a man contemplating homicide. Mrs. No Thumbs got up and said, "Haven't seen you in ages, Butch!"

"Hey, ladies." He was just standing there. I was ready to kill him. I wanted him to fly around the room and knock these bitches out.

One of the mob wives said, "You're April's husband, right?"

"Oh, yeah!" Awkward tone. "She's my wife. A very good wife. She's got a nice rack and everything…"

Sigh.

Gina, that's Mrs. No Thumbs' name, asked him if he wanted anything to eat. Then she ordered the maid to make him a baked ziti.

"Won't that take forever?" I asked.

"Oh, but it's worth it," Gina said. "Did you see the new perfume in campaign 22?"

Then Johnny and some of the mob husbands grabbed Butch and took him in the other room. I was so mad I could spit.

So I endured several more hours with the mob wives of New York. They talked about their kids, their stuff and eventually it rolled around to their sex lives.

I won't repeat the repugnant discussion that I was forced to listen to, but I must say that if half the stuff she says about Johnny is true, then I can see why she stays with him even though he's a goon who can't raise his own children.

Then they all looked at me. Crap.

"What about you and Butch?" Gina asked. "It must be interesting."

Think. Think. Gag. Think. "Oh, I guess so…"

"Is he, like, human… I mean how…"

"He's withholding sex to preserve his life force. Taoist ninja and all that." Thank you, _Taosist Sexual Practices_.

"Does that sort of store up his energy and he puts on a burst later?"

I needed to stop this line of questioning before my brain melted. "He's forbidden me from talking about it. It ruins… the… um… So, what about, Claire?"

But my deflection didn't work. A girl married to a mutant is more interesting than a girl married to a Sicilian. Go figure.

"I need to use the bathroom," I said, jumping up. When all else fails, retreat to the bathroom.

I wandered around the house looking for the men. I heard male cheering and Raph's voice coming from upstairs. Sounded like a party. I found them in the den. Johnny, Raph, Zippo, Tony and the husbands were watching football on the biggest TV that I've ever seen and they were all drinking wine and eating ziti. Raph was just laughing it up and blending in scary well.

Zippo saw me in the doorway and said, "Oh, man, Butch. You're old lady looks mad."

"Yeah, his 'old lady' is furious," I said. "This is the big rescue plan?" I was ready to go off on him just for enjoying himself while I was forced to make up stuff about our non-existent sex life. "You're going to watch football and eat ziti?"

"Drink wine too," he said as he took a sip.

The guys all laughed.

Johnny helped things out by saying, "This one could be the next Lucky Luciano."

He and another guy thumped Raph on the back. Raph looked vacant.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"The head of Murder Incorporated," Johnny said.

"I'm sure that your father would be thrilled to know that you've been pegged as the next leader of Murder Incorporated, Raph."

Raph sighed and put down his wine and ziti and said to Johnny, "You know, you're holding my… April… hostage and I have to demand for her back and all that."

Johnny flared into a rage and I wondered vaguely if he was on cocaine. He jumped out of his chair and screamed, "YOU GREEN FREAK! I INVITE YOU INTO MY HOME AND LET YOU EAT MY ZITI AND YOU HAVE THE GUTS TO ASK ME FOR YOUR WIFE BACK?"

Raph stared at him and then shrugged at me. "Could I have a word with my wife in private?" he said.

Johnny smashed a vase and Raph took that as assent. He marched me out into the hallway and shut the door.

I smacked him on the arm and said, "So are you enjoying yourself, partying with my captors?"

"Hey, I'd like to kick their asses, but I like eating better so… If I came in here fighting I wouldn't get any ziti, would I?" He said it like it was so obvious. "Plus, you don't understand how the mob works. We're doing delicate negotiates in there. And I need to keep him around. If I kill him then I can't buy stuff off him anymore."

So Raph is slightly more diplomatic than I had estimated.

"He wouldn't hurt you, anyway," Raph said. "Then he knows that I would kill him for sure and then he wouldn't be able to collect on my debts when he was dead, you know."

Gina and a few of the ladies came up the steps and saw us and she said, "Oh, there you are Butch. April was just telling us how you're not having sex with her so that you can renew your potency."

"Was she?" he asked me, with narrowed, evil eyes.

"Yeah, so. How does that work? Can anybody do it?" she asked.

"I guess," he said. He was turning red and backing away from her slightly.

I tried to intervene. "We don't like talking about this kind of thing. We like to have our privacy…"

"If you're worried about stamina," Gina insisted. "Then my husband has a supply of Cialis that he picked up…"

"Well, actually," he said. "We're trying to have another baby."

"Yeah, especially since we gave the one away," I said, raising my eyebrows at him, hoping he would get the hint.

Thankfully, he did. "Oh, yeah. Kids. Pssht. Who needs them? But you know what they say about having babies. You get to have lots of sex first? Is that what they say?" he asked me.

This whole conversation was so wrong. Well, I won't repeat it, but Gina said a couple of things that made me want to cover his impressionable ears. It was kind of funny though, watching him nodding and playing along, even though he didn't catch up and figure out what she meant until she had finished. Then his eyes bugged out and he said to Gina, "You're a nasty old lady, aren't you?"

I was hoping she would laugh, but she sucked in a lungful of air and bellowed, "John Vincent Basso!"

He opened the door and stuck his head out. Apparently, he didn't want to expose his whole body to his angry wife in case she was contemplating an attack. "What, baby?"

"This THING…" she pointed at Raph. His anger meter was going up really fast and I was trying to find the nearest exit. "Called me a nasty old lady! What are you going to do about it?"

Johnny jumped into the hallway. "You offend my lady! You offend me in my own house! You offend my sandwich truck!"

The other mobsters in the next room all gasped in shock at the audacity.

"You will pay! You will feel the sting of…"

Raph didn't wait to figure out what kind of sting he would feel because he punched Johnny straight in the face. Then Gina jumped on his shell and started pounding him on the back of the head.

Well, I couldn't have any of that, so I pulled her hair and she screamed and fell backwards on the floor. He whipped out his sais and took out a few of the braver guys with a few hits and disarmed Tony and Zippo.

Raph looked around and said, "Well, that was disappointing."

But Gina jumped me and we were rolling around on the ground in a full blown cat fight. I still have a bite mark on my arm and two broken nails. The guys all rushed out the den to watch and Raph helpfully bet $10 on me against Johnny.

I am proud to say that I kicked Gina Basso's ass. And I pulled out one of her hair extensions. Raph told me to keep it as a trophy.

Johnny said to Raph, "Butch, I still want you to buy the sandwich truck. It's the honorable thing to do."

"How about I pay for the sandwich to be replaced."

Johnny considered it. "Sure. That works."

"Add it my tab," Raph said, smirking widely as he pushed Gina off me and gathered me off the floor. He has no intention of ever paying his tab.

"Will do," Johnny said. He's not the brightest bulb in the box and doesn't get the hint yet. "Hey, I'll even give you a lift home."

On the way out, he took us to the garage to show us his new Taco Stand. What can I say? It looks like a Taco Stand. It has a big plastic taco on top and it plays the Tarantella Calabrese. "It's the Nacho 4000 model," Johnny said, pulling off the dust cloth. "It has a steel handle with non-stick grips and aeronautical design for the best airstream flow."

"I guess that's a plus if you're sending it to the moon," I said, still clutching Gina's extension in my hand.

Raph was getting impatient to leave. He said later that he wanted to take me home so he could to find some Purple Dragons to take out. He hadn't gotten the action that he wanted.

So that's why Raph calls the Great Taco War of 2010. My catfight with Gina Basso.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Gina just brought over my Avon order. I think the lipstick will work nicely.

When we got back to the lair after the catfight I got to hear Raph bragging about how cool it was.

But Leo had to be the voice of chivalry and say, "I blame myself. I dishonored him by losing his plastic sandwich." Snorting from his brothers. I think that's the most ridiculous thing I've heard him say. And he said it with whole sincerity, which made it even more priceless. "I should have replaced it and then this wouldn't have happened. April, thank you for your bravery defending Raphael, but I must insist that you let us handle the fighting from now on."

"Yeah, well," I said, stroking Raph's arm, hoping it would make him uncomfortable. "Nobody messes with my man."

Mikey and Don were in the exact same position on the couch that we had left them in. Mikey pulled the blanket away from his head so that he could point and laugh at Raph.

Raph growled at us like a big ape and pushed me away. Then he jumped up and headed towards the door mumbling, "Got stuff to do."

"Save it for the bedroom, honey," I yelled after him.

I heard his voice echo down the tunnel, "I'd flip you off I had a middle finger!"

Obviously, I had to explain that little exchange to Splinter.


	35. Chapter 35

_I can't resist the boys writing in her diary._

Dear Diary,

Leo's over at my place right now being really weird and existential. I've decided to withdraw from the conversation and observe. Seems like a bad topic to discuss with guys who are on the verge of mental chaos at the best of times anyway.

I thought that it would bother Raph the most but he's just squishing up his face, trying to understand it.

Mikey just said, "I don't want to not exist! I just got used to living! That's totally unfair, universe!"

Don says, "I think I can conduct definitive experiments proving that we all exist." He picked up a fork and stabbed Mikey, who squealed. "See. You exist."

Leo was looking like a crazed guru. I shouldn't have given him that Nietzsche last week. "But how do we know that a pain response means that we exist? Isn't pain just an impulse to tell our brain to react from harm or danger? Don't people feel false pain sometimes?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Raph said, still looking confused.

"What if none of us are real?" Mikey said in an absolute panic. "And we're just a dream in some giant's head?"

Leo pointed at him. "That's right. We could just be the illusion of something else that exists."

"'I think therefore I am,'" Raph said. He looked really pleased with himself.

"But what about inanimate objects? Don't they exist?" Mikey tapped the table. "Maybe they think too and we don't know."

"Are you two stoned?" Don asked.

They just finished talking about it now. I said that I wouldn't feed guys who didn't exist. So they all concurred that they existed and sat down to dinner.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Ugh. Now Mikey is asking what the purpose of living is if we aren't even sure that we're real or not.

Leo just said, "We have to live life to the fullest in case it's real I guess. Nietzsche said that we should just live for ourselves because we are the only ones who determine our reality."

"This Neat Sheet sounds like an asshole," Raph said elegantly as he licked his hands clean.

"Nietzsche, was a great philosopher," Leo said. He pantomimed using a napkin at Raph, who halfheartedly copied him.

"Well, if we should only live for ourselves, then why bother fighting crime?" I just asked that. Mikey's giving me weird looks because I'm writing down what they're saying.

I'm Michelangelo Hamato and I don't exist. And neither does this diary. I don't exist and you don't exist. And April doesn't exist either.

Yeah, Mikey just wrote that.

This existence stuff is total utter total total complete bullshit.

That was Raph. He's not happy with existentialism.

Those guys are crazy. I've never seen them before in my life.

That was Don.

Leo's mad now and refuses to write me a line.

* * *

Dear April's Diary,

Descartes goes into a café and the waiter asks him if he's ready to order. He said, "I think not," and he disappears.

Donny needs a brain transplant.

He can have Mikey's. It's not got much use before I want to watch pay per view I promise that I'm good for it this time.

Raph, I'm making you write lines when we get home.

All around a pig's tail is pork.

All around a turtle's tail is shell.

Get another strippers pole it was a lot of fun I know that I don't use punctuation I'm not stupid I'm just in a hurry.

MICHELANGELO IS A GOD!

Michelangelo is an idiot.

Well, Leonardo is a bossy old lady.

Once there were three guys stranded on a desert island and a genie came to them. The first wished to get off the island and the genie sent him away. The second wished for the same thing and genie sent him away too. The third said he was lonely and missed his friends and wished they were there with him.

Maybe none of them really existed. Ever think of that? Lol

Lol lmfao

Raph sings Madonna songs in the shower.

Fuck you

Like a virgin touched for the very first time

Watch your mouth, Raphael.

Watch your back, Leonardo.

There was once a beautiful girl named April O'Neil. She had four really awesome friends and they had a super cool dad.

Then they all died and she started hanging around with loser mutants they lived in the sewers and she spent all her money feeding them she had a big boost in self esteem because she was better looking them all them put together quit licking me pervert

You know you like it.

Sicko.

Ew. Raph's fingers taste like BBQ sauce.

Quit tasting each other.

Leo took my plate. I wasn't done with it.

Where are my shoes?

AHAHAHAHA!

Shut up. If I said that when I was unconscious in the LeSabre, then nobody was around to hear it. So did it exist? Does a request for shoes exist when no one is around hear it?

Man, Leo, why are your hands so much bigger than mine?  
You know what they say about big hands…

Gross guys

Big shell. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Live in a sewer cant

There were some hunters and one of them shoots the other. So he calls 911. The one who wasn't shot. He asks the 911 operator what to do. She says, "First, you should make sure that he's dead." She hears a gun shot. Then he goes, "Okay, what next?"

* * *

Dear Diary,

So… yeah… Just found their doodling.

I think Don's the one telling the jokes.


	36. Chapter 36

_I need to stop looking at turtlecest. I take one little peek and it gives me weird nightmares. It did get me thinking about under what circumstances my version of the boys would kiss each other. Don't worry. Not remotely cest. Like Leo I am also an oldest child and remember doing evil things to my younger sibling. It doesn't matter how gallant you end up as an adult. We all start out as evil and manipulative children. I borrowed the "ask the little kids if we can stay up story" from my friends. Thought I should give credit._

Dear Diary,

I guess you get up to some pretty strange stuff to amuse yourself when you're teenagers. Especially when you live underground and grow up only knowing your brothers and father. I think shame becomes a foreign term.

Saw another display of this bizarre behavior. It was cute, but still… bizarre. But I joined in so…

I went down to the lair to check on Don's head yesterday. I haven't been checking on Mikey really. I think he only had the flu because he's almost fully recovered. Don still has some headaches and sensitivity to light. He's such an angel though and doesn't complain at all. Whereas Mikey just laid there on the couch for three weeks like he was dying and ordering everybody around.

So I entered in the lair and what did I find? Raph was sitting on the couch watching a _Modern Marvels_ episode about the history of soda and Mikey was crawling around on his lap, trying to kiss him. Raph had his hand stretched out on Mike's plastron, holding him back at arm's length and was totally ignoring him.

"Hey, you two," I said, hoping they would cut out this disturbing behavior.

"Hey, April," Raph said. Neither stopped.

"Is something that will cause Splinter to kill himself?" I asked.

Leo was at the computer and said, "No, they've always done this."

"So, Mikey, do you try to kiss your brothers often?"

"No, just Raph," he said.

Raph shoved him on the floor and Mikey landed on his shell.

"You're going to have to explain so that I don't have nightmares. Where's Don?"

"In his room," Leo said, turning off the computer. He's the gentleman and always tries to divert his attention to the house guest. "The sound of the TV was bothering him."

"I'll go check on him after I hear this horror story," I said sitting next to Raph on the couch.

Mikey was still lying on his shell, rocking back and forth slightly. He looked up at me and said, "Okay, when we were toddlers we all kissed each other goodnight."

Leo had to interrupt. "You kissed us goodnight. We didn't necessarily all stand there kissing each other."

"Whatever. I kissed them all goodnight. Well, I kissed Donny and then Leo. And I would kiss Raphie here and he would cry."

I elbowed Raph, who was scowling and trying hard to ignore us. "That's so cute."

Mikey jumped up and sat on the coffee table right in Raph's line of vision. He recognized the danger of this and hopped up onto the couch on my other side. "Well, I stopped kissing Raph after he was big enough to beat me up. But I kept kissing Leo and Don till I was about…"

"Six," Leo said loudly.

"Funny. I thought I was more like eight or nine," Mikey said scratching his head.

"Five." Leo was looking uncomfortable.

"Well, anyway, I told Raph that I'd kiss him someday and I've been trying ever since. Nobody's kissed him since he was about four. I'm going to do it someday too. And not when you're knocked out or anything. You're going to be awake. And neither of us will be in danger of dying either. No pity kisses. You're going to get kissed, buddy, and I'll be there to see it happen."

"We don't sit around kissing each other," Leo had to add unnecessarily, like I would get the wrong impression from this story.

"Yeah, it was a really racy story," I said to him. "You guys kissing each other as little children."

Raph was manfully ignoring the whole conversation.

I got up to check on Don, who was sitting in his room with the lights off. "You okay in here?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." He didn't look fine. He looked really tired.

I turned on the light and he said urgently, "Oh, no don't do that," and shut his eyes.

I turned the lights off again. "Sorry. I thought you were getting better."

"So did I. But I think it gets worse first. But it's not that bad. We've all been worse off than this." He managed a pained smile.

I sat next to him on his bed and saw that he was reading a big book about Mendel. "Casual reading huh?"

He threw the book aside. "Hurts my eyes too much."

So I'm kind of worried about him. But he keeps saying that the symptoms get worse in the weeks after a concussion and then get better and that it's perfectly normal. I hope so. I feel bad that he just sits in the dark alone all the time.

I sat with him and we had a long talk about… something… can't remember. And then I noticed that he was looked strained so I put him to bed and left the room.

I had a really evil idea as I came out into the lair. I rub my hands together even now as I think about it.

Mikey was making dinner and Raph was sitting with Splinter playing Mancala on the coffee table. So I went up to them and said, "Well, I'm going home now."

They all mumbled goodbye.

Then I grabbed Raph's head and kissed him. I'm shocked that he didn't dodge me. I suppose it was the shock.

Leo was looking at the computer monitor again and said, "The king is dead," without looking away.

Mikey let the meat fall out of the frying pan, he was laughing so hard.

Raph wiped his mouth and said, "I feel so cheap. You didn't even buy me dinner first."

Mikey ran up to me and said, "Kiss me too!" So I kissed Mike.

Then Don came out of the bedroom, rubbing his eyes and said, "What's going on? I have a major headache…"

"Kiss Donny!" Mikey commanded.

"What? Huh?" Don asked as I swooped down on him. I kissed him and then he just said, "Whatever. I'm going back to bed, you sickos."

I moved on to Leo, who backed away with a "kiss me and die" kind of look.

And I even kissed Splinter to make it even. I worried for a second that he would be really mad or put off, but he laughed at me. Splinter's so easy going. I still think he should adopt me.

"I remember when Raphael cried when Michelangelo kissed him goodnight," Splinter said, eyes glazed in reminiscence.

"Sensei, please," Raph said. He was already embarrassed enough, I guess.

"I believe it was Leonardo's fault."

"It was not!" Leo said from the computer, with feigned indignation. "I'm totally guiltless here."

Raph pointed dramatically at him. "Hey, it was too your fault. I remember now! You said he was giving us all the kiss of death and that I would die in the night!"

"I did no such thing," he said with a very suspicious smile. "I was a little angel."

Mikey was gathering the meat off the floor and ran it under the sink. "And remember when Leo had me doing his chores for a whole month because he told me that they passed a law that the oldest son is exempt from chores and that I would go to jail if I didn't do them?"

Raph was losing his Mancala game, but didn't seem to mind. He said, "I remember a lot of nights where me and Leo would be in that far bedroom at the old place and then we would send Don or Mike out to ask if we could stay up after bed time and then we would hear him getting paddled."

Leo laughed loudly. "Yeah, I remember that. Sensei, can we stay up? Waaaah!"

"You guys were tyrants, weren't you?" I asked.

"Nah, they liked it," Raph said. "They did it every time we asked anyway."

Leo said in a whispered voice, "Hey, Raph. I want to stay up. Let's get Mikey to ask if we can stay up."

Raph played along and said, "Hey, Mikey. Why don't you go ask Master Splinter if we can stay up? I'll let you play with my fire truck." Then he imitated Mikey's voice and said, "Okay, Raphie. Master Splinter, can we stay up late? Waaaah!"

"You guys were so mean to us," Mikey said as he looked in the fridge. "Sensei, why did you always paddle us when we asked?"

"Because I was glad to be rid of you for a few minutes before I went to bed myself," he said with a mischievous smile. He had this blissful good-old-days expression.

Don wandered back out of the bedroom to join in. "I couldn't help but overhear the conversation and I wanted to tell you all a very traumatic story that involves Mr. Perfect."

"Oh, do tell," I said and patted the couch next to me.

He sat down heavily and said, "Well, when we were little kids I remember asking you, Sensei, where our mother was."

"I do recall that," Splinter said as he made a move in his game.

Don put his feet on the coffee table and Raph pretended to faint. "So anyway," Don said, swatting at him with his foot. "I remember asking Leo if he remembered our mother and he said…"

"These are malicious likes, April. Lies." He was smirking.

He said, "Oh, we have different mothers. Me, Raph and Mikey all have the same mother and she died. She was married to Master Splinter, so he's our real father. Your parents traded you to him. Ever wonder why we don't have a TV? We had one until you came along."

I gaped at Leo who was having a fit of evil giggles at the computer screen. "That's awful!"

"You said that Sensei needed a fourth kid so that we could have even sparring matches," Don said.

"That's ridiculous," Raph said as he lost the game.

"Yeah, like we'd ever trade away the TV for you," Leo said. "His real parents were probably like, 'Suckers.'"

He and Raph laughed.

"Hey," Mikey said, leaning on the open fridge door with a foggy expression. "Do you guys remember when you used to have me crawl through that passage in the east tunnel?"

"Oh, yeah!" Leo said, turning to look at him with sudden memory. "We used to tell you there were kittens at the other end."

"Yeah, I remember when Raph shut you in there," Don said, rubbing his aching head.

Mikey looked confused. "You guys never shut me in there."

"Yeah, he did," Don said. "I remember somebody getting katas for it."

"You locked me in the cupboard," Mikey said. "You said it was haunted."

"I remember that," Raph said. "You were so gullible."

"I still can't believe you two were so mean to us," Mikey said. "I was shut up in that cupboard at least once a week."

Raph said nostalgically, "I went by that little passage this week and I looked in there. It's about a foot and half wide. I can't believe we were ever so small that we could fit in there. I wish we still could."

"We used to make sandwiches and eat in there," Leo said. "And I would carry spiders in a tissue and drop them on Raph when he wasn't looking."

Raph shivered with the memory.

Splinter looked around at Mikey. "Michelangelo, do not leave the door standing open."

"Oh, sorry."

Boy, I like hearing stories about their childhood.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Hope I didn't spread Mike's flu around.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don's doing better now. He's still got headaches, but isn't sensitive to light and sound anymore and he's training in the dojo again, although his eyes are watering at the end of the sessions. Mikey's been calling me a slut lately. I tell him that it takes one to know one.


	37. Chapter 37

_I'm afraid of being attacked. I thank my extra paranoid mother for that. But it keeps me safe. Unlike April, I don't walk around on the street by myself in the dark. I assume I'll be murdered. And yes, I've also washed dishes in the bathtub before. Don't ask. I had a weird upbringing. I'm also from a vast network of both male and female Austen addicts. Didn't want to leave it hanging in that spot, but I got hung up. Sorry. Trying to come up with normal crime scenarios that don't involve ninjas or mutants as the offenders. Or Purple Dragons. Just regular sick criminals. They're scarier than Purple Dragons or the Foot Clan._

Dear Diary,

Leo will be 17 this winter. Hard to believe.

Came home from shopping today and found him sitting at my kitchen table in the dark with his head in his hands. I turned the lights on and said, "Hey, handsome. Whatcha doing? Did Don pass his concussion on to you? I had no idea they were contagious."

He jumped up and climbed out the window. Weird.

Spent a few hours half heartedly cleaning. Found lots of teenage boy artifacts. There was a half eaten candy bar stuck to the bottom of one of the couch cushions, although in all honesty it could have been mine. But the ten pound hand weight that I tripped over is definitely not mine.

Then Raph called me and yelled, "What did you to do Leo! He's crying like a little girl!"

"Do to him? I didn't do anything to him. Why is he crying?"

"He said he was just with you. What happened?"

"Put Don on the phone."

Pause and rattle as the phone exchanged hands. I could hear Raph rampaging in the background.

"Hello, ma'am," Don said.

"Why's Leo crying like a little girl?"

"We suspect he was crying at some point, but that's a gross exaggeration. Raph, shut up!"

"Well, call me if you guys need anything."

"Sure."

Haven't heard anything from them, so I suppose that it's okay. Going to call Raph and order him to come over and do my laundry. I like ordering him around.

I just bought a DVR. Accidentally recorded an infomercial for a lawn tool this morning.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We were about to have another movie night and Mikey had Don in a headlock because he voted for _Emma_, even though it didn't win. Then, shock of shocks, Raph voted for it too. But Mikey doesn't dare put him in a headlock. Raph said that they've all seen _Die Hard_ dozens of times and he just wanted a change.

I expected Leo to threaten Mike with extra katas, but he wasn't paying attention. He was watching the TV. The news was on.

The reporter said that they'd found a rape victim dead in a dumpster. It caught my attention because it was only four blocks away. "Wow, that's awful," I said. I have to admit that I wasn't paying that much attention to it though. Another dead body in New York City, you know.

"I know!" Mikey said. "Now we're going to have to watch girls at tea parties all night!"

Leo tapped me on the arm and said, "Could I see you in private?"

That was oddly formal. He walked me into my bedroom and shut the door. Then he just stared at me for a few seconds.

"We're private so…"

"I want you to promise me that you won't walk down near Division and Cherry in the dark until this guy is found."

"If he's found," I said. Let's face it. Most rape cases are never solved. "Promise you?"

I knew there was something going on, but I couldn't put my finger on it. He's usually kind of overprotective of us all, but not so directly. So I promised and then we watched the movie.

And as soon as the credits rolled, Raph fled out the windows and I could've sworn he said, "See ya, suckers."

* * *

Dear Diary,

I was walking home from the gym. Yeah, I've had this gym membership for about eight months. There's something about owning one that makes me feel like I'm mentally attuned with being fit, so I shouldn't have to go to the gym and actually work out. My body should just turn fit because I deserve it. Raph did my laundry and commented on how all my underwear is getting stretched out and that spurred me to the gym. I asked Raph what was wrong with Leo the other night and he told me to mind my own business. So I'm sure that Leo told him. Normally, he would speculate or call him a crybaby.

It was dark out and I do walk at night. I mean I would have to hide in my apartment if I didn't. I stopped and realized that I was at the corner of Division and Cherry. I could even see the dumpster they found that girl in, down in the alley. There was still yellow tape. No body outline. I think they only do that on TV.

Well, I've learned enough hanging around with professional ninjas to know that I shouldn't go skulking around in seemingly abandoned alleys. They always turn out to be only seemingly abandoned. So I started on my way again.

Then I was grabbed from behind, with one hand over my mouth and the other around my waist and carried back into the alley. Whenever you read something about having a pair of strong arms around you, it sounds sexy. Well, sure doesn't feel sexy if you don't know who just grabbed you. And this was an ironclad, impossible-to-escape-from, terrifying kind of grip. I did have the initial, "I'm going to die!" thoughts but then I was thinking, "Who'll cancel my classes for me?" and "Who'll inherit the Second Time Around? I don't have a will and I don't want it to go out of the family." I know I should have been trying to escape, but honestly, it just felt useless to even try. And I was too busy focusing on myself that I didn't even notice that I'd been carried over behind the dumpster where that girl was found.

I heard, "This is why I told you not to come down here!" in my ear. Hey, I knew that angry voice. Leo let me go and spun me around. I pounded on his plastron a few times, but it did absolutely nothing. "What are you doing down here?" he asked.

"I'm an adult so… what were you doing down here?" I was still fighting off the going-to-die feeling.

His eyes went to the dumpster for a split second.

"You're waiting for the guy, aren't you?"

Shifty eyes. "It's none of your business…"

"Oh, don't give me that."

He started down the darker end of the alley and called, "Come on," after me.

We tried to have a civil conversation, but it felt forced. I think we talked about Harry Potter. Then he stopped in the alley behind my building, but he didn't come in.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Still mad about Leo's paternalistic behavior and his sneak attack. I went to see Splinter about it and he said, "I have told my sons to treat you with respect and he has told me that he was worried for your safety. He thinks that you do not pay as much attention as you should."

"Well, I'm an adult and I've been not-getting-killed since before he was born."

Splinter was doing some kind of Japanese calligraphy and paused to paint a few strokes. "You must understand that he is prone to worry."

"Yeah, yeah."

Then I heard Don's voice yelling from the kitchen, "Who left all these dirty dishes sitting in water in the bathtub?"

Mikey answering, "Me and Raph were gonna wash them in there because they were stacked all over the counters, but Leo made us clean up the living room."

Splinter sighed slightly and rolled his eyes, but ignored it.

"What are you painting?" I asked.

He finished the page and said, "I painted your name. I will give it to you with a proper hanging when it is dry."

So I squeed and went home happy. He bought me off. That tricky rat.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don and Mike are going to have to join Jane Austen Movies Anonymous. Have to say that I didn't expect that to happen. And I'm solely responsible for this new addiction. I'm also an addict too. Someone help us!

We watched _Pride and Prejudice_ with Colin Firth. Six frickin' hours. It was great. Raph and Leo refused to participate. Don said, "I think Darcy reminds me of Raph."

And Mikey said, now don't fall out of your chair, "I don't really see that. Austen was trying to use Darcy to represent the positive aspects of the landed aristocracy in her time. And Lady Catherine was the negative side. And their houses are symbolic of their characters. Darcy lives in a house that's full art and learning and it's open to visitors. And it's at one with the natural landscape. Lady Catherine's house is overly ornate and empty and she's really proud and always bragging about how much the furniture cost. Plus, she's supposed to have really ugly topiary. At least it's ugly and boxy in this movie anyway. It's meant to impress the visitor, not welcome them. I don't think Raph's an artistic or learned kind of guy. Plus, he wouldn't look good in those tight pants they wore then."

I almost fainted at that speech. I don't know why. I know he reads and he isn't stupid but…

Don looked put off and said, "I just meant that Darcy's rude because he's uncomfortable in social situations."

"Well, yeah," Mikey said. I could tell that he wanted to argue more about it.

"I think there's one really big difference. Raph's real and Darcy isn't," I said. "What about Leo? Who do you think he's like?"

Mikey said, "He's like Mr. Knightley in _Emma_. He's kind of quietly snarky and good and rich and handsome and all. Sort of perfect in a general way. Fearless is like that."

"Who do you think we're like, April?" Don asked.

I thought for a minute and then said, "Well, I'd say you're like Edward Ferrars."

"Dude, you're Hugh Grant," Mikey said, punching him on the arm.

"And you're Willoughby," I said to Mikey.

His face fell a little. "Hey…"

One of the weirdest conversations I've ever had with them.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Eight hours and three movies later. Mikey's hanging upside down off the couch and Don is asleep. Watching _Becoming Jane_.

Mikey just said, "I don't like the idea of this movie. Cassandra burned all her letters, didn't she? How do we know what happened with LeFroy? I wish I could wring Cassandra's neck."

Don woke up long enough to say, "I'm glad I don't have to ride a horse and carry a musket."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Austen hangover.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Poor Fearless. Poor, poor Fearless.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The truth has finally come out.

I was cleaning up the remnants of the Austen party and listening to the news. I'm slightly more paranoid lately about safety and crime. I suppose Leo would be proud since he confuses paranoia with wariness.

I decided to practice using the DVR again and tried to record the news. Too many buttons.

As I was throwing out all the paper hats that Mikey had made out of newspaper last night (okay, I was wearing one as I cleaned) I heard the newscaster saying, "A body found three nights ago at the corner of Division and Cherry has been identified as 38 year old Nissa Hopkins. The mother of three was reported missing a week ago…" Name wasn't familiar. Went back to work. "The body was found in a dumpster and police say that the victim was sexually assaulted. Police say that an anonymous caller reported the body and that the caller is now a suspect. They have released this 911 tape."

I wasn't paying close attention because I realized that one of us had spilled a soda on one of the Netflix CDs.

I could hear the sound of a 911 dispatcher say, "911 dispatch, what is your emergency?"

Then a male voice say, "I'd like to report a dead body at the corner of Division and Cherry. It's a woman."

"A dead body? Is this woman hurt?"

"Not anymore. She's in the dumpster." Boy that sounded familiar. My paper hat slid off my head as I bent down to pick up some garbage.

"Could you describe what you found?"

"I'd rather not," the man said.

I'd rather not. Who do I know that says that?

"Please, sir. Are you sure that she's dead?"

"Quite sure." It was Leo. That was Leo's voice on the 911 tape. I dropped the garbage bag on the floor.

"How did you find the woman? You said that she's in a dumpster?"

"Yes, she was partially buried."

"Were you looking in the dumpster for some reason?" the dispatcher asked.

Long silence as he breathed into the phone.

The 911 dispatcher said, "Well, the police are on their way. Could you stay on the line…"

The newscaster came on the screen again and said, "If you have any information regarding this case you're asked to call Silent Observer. The number is on your screen."

So our Leo's polite and gentlemanly phone manners and dodgy ninja conversation has landed him as the number one suspect in a rape and murder case. Perfect. Explains a lot.


	38. Chapter 38

_Let me tell you. This chapter's interactions took me a long time. I'll move on to something fun after this. They're watching what I was watching while writing this. Hehe. Cherish this chapter. It's taking me ages to finish it. Stupid Leo. My sister and I told each other stories almost every night. Ah, youth. That scene in the bedroom is straight from my teen years._

Dear Diary,

I called Leo and told him to come over. He tried to make a lame excuse and said that he had to stay home and wash the dishes in the bathtub so that they could take baths. I guess they haven't bathed in four days. Whatever. It's not the first time. I think they're having one of those standoffs where everybody waits for the other person to clean it up. Don bathes the most, so he'll probably get stuck doing it.

Then I told Leo that he owed me money for the ruined Netflix _Sense and Sensibility_ CD and he went all gallant and trotted right over with the money. But, alas, he realized too late that it was a trap. He couldn't jump out the window and run away because that would be too rude. Raph would certainly nose dive out the window to avoid a confrontation, but Leo always stands there and takes whatever abuse is thrown at him. I'm starting to wonder if leaping out of windows is actually a better way to deal with stress.

He came in the window and handed me the money, apologizing and even had to restrain himself from bowing at me. I could tell that he really wanted to do it badly, like a sneeze.

Then I said, "You know, I heard your voice on TV the other day. How does it feel to be a famous murder suspect?"

He looked like I'd slapped him in the face and to be honest, I kind of enjoyed it at the moment. He'd made me think he was going to kill me, so I felt even.

But my triumph was short lived because he just sat down at the kitchen table and stared at his lap. He mumbled a few things to himself in Japanese.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I'd rather not say. That's why I said it in Japanese, you know." He isn't usually that terse.

I sat in the chair next to him and watched for any signs of weepiness. I haven't seen him cry much and I don't know what to do with him when he does. I said, "This isn't your fault. You can't save everybody."

"Are you telling me because you think I'm so full of myself that I don't know that?" He had his face in his hands now.

"No, but… I don't know… it seems like an important point. And why didn't you tell me that you found that woman?"

He stood up and crossed the room, jerking like I had grabbed him. "What use would that be?"

"I'd like to know the reason when you go out of your way to change my behavior. Did you tell Don or Mikey? Or Splinter?"

He leaned up against the wall and looked at the floor. He didn't answer.

"No, but you told Raph." That was really bugging me for some reason. I know it shouldn't have, but it did.

"It's not your business who I tell…" he started again. His voice was rising.

"When you ask… no command me to stop walking at night, then I think I deserve an explanation. You can't just order me around without telling me why."

He leaned his head back against the wall and looked at the ceiling, laughing. I didn't expect that reaction from him. I expected a stern lecture on street safety. "You know, I should have expected this. The biggest crime I can commit is to give an order that isn't fully explained. Maybe everybody would be happier with me if I just kept my mouth shut and let you all get killed."

"Now that's not what I mean," I said. I was still sitting in the chair, talking to him from across the room. "It just makes me feel like you don't trust me."

I'm not used to having this kind of relationship talk with him. I usually presume that everything's fine with Leo. And we usually are fine. We've only had one argument that I can remember. I've heard him arguing with others, but not really with me.

"What good does it do me," he said in a really loud and measured voice, "To be transparent about my decisions? All that matters is the outcome and sometimes the truth will only put that in jeopardy. Raphael and I decided…"

I pointed at him dramatically. "That's it! Right there! You and Raph decided! You don't get to make those decisions for me. And you and Raph? Why did he get to know and nobody else?"

"Because I don't understand this kind of…" He sat down on the floor in a heap. "They may not like it. But it's up to them to follow me. They have to go where I lead them. I don't want to pull them down paths that are unnecessarily painful."

We were both quiet for a few minutes. I thought that this would make a nice picture to compliment that Tragic Warrior picture that they have back at the lair. It should be called Oppressed Leader.

"It's never occurred to anyone," he said, his voice blurring slightly, "that I might be carrying a burden for them. It's like everybody thinks I'm purposefully depriving them of some kind of treat when I withhold information. It may make me a bad brother and a bad friend, but it makes me a better leader."

He got up and headed towards the window. Leo's not the kind of guy that you just grab and manhandle. You need a formal invitation to enter his physical space. But I forgot and flew at him. It just felt so wrong to let him leave thinking he was a bad friend. And he hugs like an old lady. He never lets his torso make contact and he just sort of pats lightly on the back. So it feels kind of weird to get that close to him. Especially after that deal he made when I cried on his lap. So gave me a good squeeze and then it was awkward.

The awkwardness was broken when Don called and asked if he could use the shower. Theirs is still full of dirty dishes. Leo soundly told him off and said no. He said that they'll each get 30 flips if he comes home and there are still dishes in the tub.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I convinced him to stay and hang out because I was afraid that otherwise we'd have this gawky embarrassment hanging over us and I don't want that. He needs to kick back and hang sometimes. So we did what any depressed people should do. We dragged the TV into the bedroom and lay in bed eating. I told him that's what I do when I'm depressed.

"I can see why Raph always finds excuse to sleep here," he said. "You have a soft bed."

"It's not my sexual allure?" I asked as I opened a box of Valentine's Day candy. It was over eight months old.

He snorted through his nose and went, "Yeah, right." Not the kind of reaction you want to hear from a guy lying in your bed contemplating your sexiness. But a good reaction if he's a sixteen year old mutant that you view as a brother, I guess. But it still didn't do much for my self esteem. "These are old," he said, throwing the chocolates into the discard heap on the floor.

We were watching _Golden Girls_ and Leo said, "I wish I could go to St. Olaf. I bet nobody would look twice at us."

"I think it's in a parallel dimension. You know, Don said that he thinks that Raph is like Fitzwilliam Darcy. I think he's more like Sophia Petrillo."

Leo thought about it as he ate peanut butter straight from the jar. "Yeah, I can see that. Maybe I'll have to start threatening him with Shady Pines. 'Shady Pines, Raph.'"

"Can you imagine Raph as an old turtle in a nursing home?"

He was quiet for a second and said, "Not really."

Ah, the early death thing. I didn't really want to go there.

After a while I told him that I wanted to go to bed and he automatically moved to get up. I said, "Hold on. All three of your brothers have slept here. Just stay where you are."

"I've slept in your bed," he said.

He did? When was that? I'll have to think about it. But he stayed. I said, "I'm too full to turn off the light. You do it."

So he picked up the empty peanut butter jar and threw it at the light switch. He hit it dead center and the light went off. That was cool.

"Now tell me a story," I said, yawning. I was sure he would laugh or say no.

"Once there was a beautiful princess named…"

"April!" I said, in a little kid voice.

"Princess Michelangelo," he said. It was too dark to see, but I'm sure he was smiling like a devil. "Anyway, Princess Michelangelo had a sister named Princess April who he had locked in a tower in the castle. The country of Sewermania could only be ruled by a girl and Princess Michelangelo was really a boy. He wanted the throne and he knew that it was a tradition in the kingdom to throw all the boy children of the royal family to the evil dragon that lived in a cave on the outskirts of the kingdom."

"I don't like this story," I said.

He giggled at me and said, "Well, Princess April had a manservant named Donatello. He was secretly a mage and he had a plan to blast April out the tower. But she wouldn't let him do it because so far he hadn't come up with a way to blow her out of the tower without killing her."

Why do I feel that was autobiographical?

"And then Prince Leonardo came to the kingdom. He was looking for the princess of Sewermania because he needed a wife. He was the most perfect, handsome, wonderful, brave…"

"Yeah, yeah. Moving on," I said.

"And he needed a woman or he couldn't be king, I guess. And he knew that they only had princesses there. So he proposed to Princess Michelangelo and he said," now imagine in a high-pitched Leo voice, "'Oh, I couldn't leave my people, sir.'" His voice cracked at "sir."

I laughed outright.

"Then the evil dragon Raphael swooped down on the court and all the people ran around screaming. And Raphael said," in a very good imitation of Raph's voice, "'Hey, I heard that Michelangelo is really a guy so… I'm going to eat him. No hard feelings. And if he doesn't come peaceably, I'll kick ass.' Well, Michelangelo was afraid. He obviously didn't want to marry Prince Leonardo because… hey… he was a guy and he didn't want to get eaten. Man, I'm stuck."

So we both fell asleep and he never concluded the story. So I don't know if Mikey had to marry him or if Raph ate him. I'll make him finish the story some other time.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's right. Leo does travel in his sleep. I woke up and he was lying diagonally across the bed. At least he didn't spoon me in the night like SOME of his brothers who shall remain nameless. Raph and Mike.

Boy, what a mess we made. And I just got it cleaned up. Well, at least this one sticks around to clean.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don just came over. Said he was sweaty from his 30 flips and needed a shower. HAHAHAHA.

Still, I can't help but think that something isn't resolved with the whole Nissa Hopkins thing. We never really talked about it. Just that he didn't tell us about it.


	39. Chapter 39

_I seem to get inspired by whatever fanfic I read and want to do it my way. Been reading "Raphie the romantic" kinds of stuff lately. So here is my evil take on it. Plus, I love Gina Basso. And I blame you for the idea, AlexHamato, and I'm sure that April does too. hehe_

Dear Diary,

Don's here. He smells like a smokestack. Wonder what he's been up to lately. Wait…

* * *

Dear Diary,

Um… Raph barged in, complete panic on his face and said, "April, I need you to date me! Gina Basso's on to me! She doesn't think we're married! I think I'm going to hurl!"

So he went in the bathroom and had a full-fledged panic attack.

Don just sat in the living room reading the TV Guide. Guess Raph panic attacks aren't anything new to him.

After he was done almost fainting, he sat next to the toilet and said, "Gina said that she's going to forgive all my debts if we go on a double date with her and Johnny No Thumbs."

"That's the most horrific thing you could have ever said," I told him.

Don trotted into the bathroom, fiendish delight written all over his features. "Wow! Leo's going to kill you! And Master Splinter will stuff and mount your body. Maybe I could hang you next to the deer head."

"GET OUT OF HERE!" he bellowed and kicked the bathroom door shut.

I heard Don go, "Ouch!" as the door rebounded and hit him in the face.

"On a date. You've never been on a date," I said, mostly to myself.

"Yeah, thanks for bringing that up," he said. "I can fight Purple Dragons, travel to other dimensions, kill guys who threaten my family. But don't ask me on a date."

I sat on the floor next to him, thinking. "Well, what happens if you say no?"

"She said that she'll know we're not really married and then she'll send their goons after me to collect. My loans will come due immediately, so to speak, and she'll have Zippo bring them my thumbs. Not that I'm worried." He bucked up and spun his sai in his palm. "I'd actually be glad to have an excuse to kick Zippo's ass. He's been giving me these looks lately that I don't like. But…" I tried not to smile. "Master Splinter would find out." Splinter is the only person that Raph's really afraid of. "That cannot happen," he said with eyes wide.

So I told him I'd think about it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I don't know what Donny's been doing in the lab lately. Smells like a smoke house. But it always smells really strange. But not usually that strange.

I told Raph that I would do it. I helped get him into this mess by going along with it and I may have even been the one to say I was his wife in the first place. I can't really remember. So I should help him out. He's promised to have nothing more to do with Johnny or his people if his debts are forgiven. So that's an added incentive for me.

Leo's trying to look like he's okay. I hope he didn't know that woman. He's walking around looking really preoccupied. Like he's looking for his keys every minute of the day.

I'm going to give Raph etiquette lessons because we have to go to this mob-front restaurant. He said that secrecy won't be an issue because there will only be other mob underlings and he's met them all. But he has to look really suave for Mrs. No Thumbs. I will not have her thinking that I'd end up married to an ignorant slob. He's going to look like a gentleman if I have to kill him doing it.

And he's going to take romantic husband lessons. I'm making him watch lots of romantic comedies.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's walking around looking oppressed today. He had to learn how to use a full cutlery place setting and watch a bunch of Julia Roberts' movies. He keeps saying, "Kill me now. Just kill me now."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Tonight was the fateful night. Don helped me get dressed. He's good with color coordination. He picked an outfit that matched Raph's bandanna, believe it or not. I came out of the bedroom and Raph just said, "Can't you show more cleavage? I bet Zippo $100 that my woman is hotter than his."

He drove my van on the way to the restaurant and he kept playing really loud music and going past the corners he was supposed to take and then making dangerous u-turns in the middle of traffic. He did it at least four times. Then he parked the car and he kept opening the door and closing it and sounded like he was doing Lamaze breathing. I think it's a ninja focus thing.

"Just relax," I said. "You're a good actor and you can be totally charming when you want to be. Just smile and flirt and you'll do fine."

He scowled at me. I realized that I had just asked him for the impossible.

We were heading towards the restaurant and he was slinking around in the shadows, which I think he was doing just to make himself feel relaxed. That's a funny idea, isn't it? Then I realized that he was still all kitted up with weapons and I said, "Maybe you should take off that belt and your sais."

"I'm not taking off my sais! We're going to be in a room with men who are trapped with their wives and mistresses and forced to make romantic small talk! We could get attacked at any minute!"

"Fine. I'll put them in my purse. Happy?" So he stashed his other stuff in the van and I stuffed his sais in my purse, which made it about ten pounds heavier. Then we made our second approach to the restaurant. He had to regroup for a second before we went in.

He was right. I did recognize all the patrons as fellow mob underlings. I recognized several of the women from that time they kidnapped me.

Raph looked like a deer in headlights. He was inching backwards towards the door. Then Gina swooped down upon me like a bleached blond bird of prey and said, "Are you wearing the Avon that you bought from me?" She got obnoxiously close to my face to inspect my lipstick. "No, this is something else. My fashion coordinator picked it out."

Raph snorted.

"So, it's nice to see you two together, finally, as a couple," she said in a gushy voice.

Then Raph grabbed my ass really hard and said, "Yup, we've been planning on having a date night. You know, with other boring couples."

I gave him the icy glare of death and he removed his hand.

Gina mistook this glance as something other than a death stare and said, "Now, keep it together until after dinner, you two. Johnny's saved us a table in the corner. It should be nice and private so we can talk. I want to know all about you two."

Raph gulped. We'd spent so much time turning him into a gentleman that we forgot to come up with appropriate cover stories. We went back to the table and Johnny No Thumbs shook my hands and ogled my cleavage. I tried to delicately place my purse on the table, but it made a loud metallic thump, like I'd just hit it with a sledgehammer. I stood next to my chair, waiting for Raph to pull it out for me, but he was too busy checking the exits and planning future escape routes. Thinking the thoughts of the ninja. So I kicked him and he finally snapped to attention and helped me to my seat.

He did alright at first. Mostly because Johnny just talked about how he'd bought a new boat, but he sank it the first time out in the bay. Turns out you shouldn't try to open a cooler box by shooting at it when you're on a waterborne vessel. Then the waiter came by to ask for our orders and Raph ordered something and I'd already told him that the romantic thing to do was to order for both of us. But he just sat there and I knew he was wondering if he should ask if they had beer and so I had to stomp on his foot to get his attention and he wheezed out, "She'll have the same."

Then the waiter left and Gina said, "You seem to like it rough, don't you?"

"You have no idea," I muttered.

Johnny bent closer over the foofy centerpiece and squinted into Raph's face. Raph shielded himself with the menu. "What's wrong with your face?"

Raph said, "My brother punched me."

"Why would he do that?" Gina asked, with affected concern.

"I stabbed him," he said, like it happened to everybody.

"Yeah, that happened with my brother," Johnny said. I guess it does happen with brothers if they're in the mob.

Then we had to wait ages for our food and watch Johnny and Gina making out in front of us.

Raph said, "Donny found an outboard motor on the East River a few days ago. I wonder if was theirs."

Gina sucked herself away from Johnny and said to me, "So how did you two meet?"

I was going to just give a really simple answer like, "At the carnival," but I didn't get the chance. Raph said, "Oh, we met on the subway. I was going home from my job nursing sick orphans and April was going to visit the homeless shelter where she volunteers and then she was jumped by a big… um… anonymous gang member… He was like, 'I'm going to cut you, bitch!' and I saved her, right…"

"How'd you do that?" Gina asked.

He looked surprised that it wasn't obvious. Then he said, "oh, with a gun. I shot him because that's how you stop bad guys. And then I took her home and she was so sexy… with her… being vulnerable, I guess…" He was thinking really hard now. "So I took her home and we fucked around and then I moved in and we got married after that."

Wow, what a romantic epic.

"You just moved in the same day you met her?" Johnny asked. "She must be turned on by weird looking green guys with shells on their backs." He laughed.

"Well, yes I am! I have a fetish!" I'm certainly not turned on by green mutants, but he looked really enraged by the comment and I didn't think it was worth killing Johnny over. "Plus, it's what's on the inside that counts."

So we avoided a near calamity there and then they brought food and wine. Raph got really confused when they offered him his food because he had plates, bowls and cutlery all over the place. So he gathered up all but one plate, spoon, knife and fork and dumped the rest on the server's tray. Then the guy tried to pour him a third of a glass of wine and he just kept holding his glass out at him until he filled it to the brim. "It costs $200 a bottle. Don't skimp," he said.

The meal went fairly well, mostly because we didn't talk much. But then they cleared our dishes and brought out a strolling violinist. I had a bad feeling about it.

"Let's dance," Gina said coquettishly to Johnny.

So they got up to dance and me and Raph were both really relieved because we thought we could get away from them for a while. I was wishing that he was buzzed from the wine because then it would at least be less likely that he would attack somebody by the end of the night.

But Gina grabbed his arm, which made my alarm bells ring and said, "Dance with me, Raph. April, you can dance with Johnny." But he didn't knock her out or anything. Too bad.

Johnny danced with me and he was all hands. His wife didn't notice because she was too busy saying sexually explicit stuff to my sixteen year old pseudo-brother. That sick witch. At least she thinks he's thirty-five, if that's any consolation. His face was getting more and more enraged by the minute and I finally had to run over to them and intervene, pretending that my feet hurt.

So we sat back down and Gina said, eying him like an eagle, "I don't believe that I've ever seen you two kiss."

He laughed at first. I think he forgot that we were pretending to be a couple. Then looked kind of sick and swallowed hard and said, "That's because we don't believe in PDA. We're in a really strict cult."

"Oh, come on, Butch," Johnny said. "Lay one on her. Nobody will see."

"But God will know," he growled through gritted teeth. He was holding his butter knife in his fist like he was going to stab one of them.

"God won't mind," Gina said. "And what husband is so embarrassed by his wife that he won't kiss her public?"

I know in retrospect that it would have been a fantastic moment to run away to the bathroom, but honestly, I think my brain collapsed at the very idea. Plus I was certain that he would just throw the table aside and stab them both with the butter knife.

"Are you afraid?" Gina said.

"I'm not afraid of anything!" he yelled. I noticed that a few of the mobsters were looking now. Zippo had a superhot bimbo at his table. I don't know how he scored her. I think Zippo won the bet.

"I think you are afraid," Johnny said. "Come on, I dare ya."

The second that he said the word, "Dare," Raph grabbed me by the front of my dress with one hand and kissed me. I slapped him across the face and he kissed me again like there was no tomorrow, out of some kind of reflex. Then he let go and said to Johnny, "There! In your face, No Thumbs!"

About kissing Raph. No lips. So weird. Also, bad breath. And surprisingly a better kisser than Trevor.

But I jumped up from the table and ran into the ladies room with the intention of climbing out the window. So I was standing on one of the sinks, when I heard the door open and Raph saying, "What's going on? Gina's ready to drop the debt. Isn't that great? Why are you standing on the sink?"

"WHY DID YOU KISS ME TWICE?" I had my head out the window and I think I looked kind of idiotic.

"I PANICKED! GET DOWN RIGHT NOW!"

"COME UP HERE AND GET ME!"

"YOU DIDN'T JUST TELL ME TO DO THAT, DID YOU? BECAUSE I TOTALLY WILL! DON'T TEMPT ME, WOMAN!"

"YOU'RE A TERRIBLE KISSER AND YOU HAVE A DRY REPTILIAN TONGUE AND I'M LEAVING YOU HERE!" Then I made lots of girly grunting noises because my hips were too wide to get past the window and my feet were hanging out in space.

"WELL, I'VE GOT TO WORK ON THAT SINCE IT'S SO ESSENTIAL TO MY PROFESSION!"

I gave up and said, "Would you help me down? I'm stuck."

So I drummed my hands on the grass outside while he climbed up on the other sinks and pulled me out by the legs.

We sat back down at the table and my hair was all messed up and we were both steaming mad and Gina had to say, "Oh, couldn't save it until you got home, huh?"

Raph lost it and screamed, "I MAY BE A HIDEOUS MUTANT, BUT I'M A GENTLEMAN, DAMMIT, AND I WON'T HAVE YOU TALKING TO US LIKE THAT! NOW, SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!"

Yeah, he's a real gentleman. I could see him going for my purse and thought it was best to get him out of there as soon as possible.

But she forgave his debts and we cleared out of there as quickly as possible. But he did knock out the maître d' when he wished us good night.

The drive was sort of awkward. Not really. It felt like it should have been more awkward, but actually it felt awkward because it wasn't, you know. I kept thinking normally there would be the usual talk about where was this relationship going or not going, but… not necessary here.

But he said, "Sorry, I made out with you like that. Couldn't think of anything else to do. And it worked, didn't it? I'm debt free."

I couldn't help but ask, "What's wrong with your breath?"

"Oh, I was smoking in the bathroom earlier."

"Smoking?" SMOKING? "Since when?"

"A few weeks ago. Don't look at me like that. Look at Don when we get home. He's a regular chain smoker. He's using up all my money keeping him in cigarettes."

"Well, he needs some being killed when we get home." We sat a red light for a while and he fiddled with the radio. I said, "You're a good kisser, kid."

"Oh, thanks. I don't know how. Never done it before, really." Another pause. Then he said, "Let's never talk about it again."

"Agreed."

We got home and Leo was searching the cupboards for a clean dish. Don and Mikey were asleep, so I didn't get to scream at Don that night. I'm planning that for later.

But Leo asked, "So, how'd it go?"

Raph says, "It was fine. We danced and made out in front of them and then they believed us."

Leo just raised his eyebrow ridges slightly. "Is there something going on that I need to know about? Am I going to be an uncle?"

"Oh, shut up." I threw a shoe at him and he took a step sideways and it landed in the sink with more dirty dishes. "I feel like one of those people who are on talk shows because they accidentally marry their siblings. We're never talking about it again. You're sworn to secrecy. It dies with us."

So, hoping he'll keep his word.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Haven't screamed at Don yet. Planning a sneak attack. Did scream at Raph before I left after the catastrophic date. He said that I shouldn't worry because he'd only had one cigarette in three weeks and was giving it up anyway. He'd only smoked for six weeks and hadn't liked it at all. How on earth did they get started on that anyway?


	40. Chapter 40

_Read something today about how rape is viewed as a kind of seduction in yaoi fiction. I can't abide that. It's not a seduction under any circumstances._

Dear Diary,

Had a screaming fit over the phone at Don about his smoking. He said that Bald Tony dared Raph and he smoked for a few weeks and then gave the rest of his cigarettes to Don to play with. Whenever they have leftover crap, they give it to him because they assume he'll want to blow it up or dissolve it in acid or something. But he said that Raph suggested he smoke a few for his head after he was concussed, thinking it might work better than Ibuprofen. And now he's smoking upwards of half a pack a day.

And everybody knows except Leo. Even Splinter knows, but he has a way of punishing them all without doing anything. He lets them police themselves. And it usually works.

* * *

Dear Diary,

It's a really warm fall day. Middle of September. I hate school. I hate classes. I need to clean The Second Time Around. Anyway, they were going to go sparring on my rooftop and I came along. I was sitting in a lawn chair, watching them jumping around. Leo was fighting Don and Raph was fighting Mikey. They talk while they spar and I love listening to their conversations.

But not tonight. Don was huffing and puffing and he wasn't keeping up with Leo like he normally would. I think Raph was bragging to Mikey about making out with me, but I didn't really listen.

Then Leo kicked Don in the side and he spun away. Mikey gasped and said, "Don! You dropped your…"

Yeah, his pack of cigarettes fell out of his belt and landed on the ground at Leo's feet.

Raph immediately grabbed Leo and said, "It's my fault. I gave them to him in the first place."

"Hamato Donatello," Leo said in that dangerously calm voice that makes us all scared of him. "Have you been smoking?"

Don was still lurched over, catching his breath. "Maybe."

"You know very well that it's forbidden."

Don straightened up and looked at both Leo and Raph, like they were both arguing with him. "Well, look at the shit Raph gets away with. He was smoking first."

"Hey, I'm defending you, you ingrate!"

Mikey squeezed into my lawn chair and said in my ear, "Don's going to challenge one of them in a minute. He's going for his bo and he looks like he's talking business."

"Great. Another one of those stupid honor fights," I said. "I still think they're totally unfair."

He put his arm around me to make more room. "Hey, they're not meant to be fair. They're meant to be humiliating so that we won't fight each other all the time when we get into arguments."

Huh. Never thought of it like that.

Don said, "What about when Raph comes stumbling in drunk? Nobody goes off on him for that anymore. If I did that…"

Leo said, "We're not talking about Raph. We're talking about you. Did you even notice how slow you were tonight? Imagine if we were attacked."

Raph decided to withdraw from the argument before more of his vices were laid bare and he sat on the ground next to the lawn chair.

Don yelled a long phrase in Japanese and Leo responded with a shorter and quieter Japanese statement. Don visibly flinched and I heard Mikey say, "No, way. That's pretty harsh."

Raph snickered. "Finally, somebody else noticed."

Then Leo yelled back in Japanese and Raph added a smirky Japanese comment over them.

"Raph, shut up," Mikey said. "It's bad enough without your help."

More Japanese shouting.

I still don't know what they were saying. Raph looked at Mikey at one point and said, "Wait, did Sensei really say that?"

Mikey shrugged.

We listened to a few more shouted remarks in Japanese and then Don took a few steps and picked up the packet of cigarettes. Raph groaned and said, "Don, you loser. You've made your point."

He lit up and smugly stood there puffing in front of Leo. But then Don's eyes grew with shock as Leo quickly drew his katanas on him and charged. Mikey yawned and said, "About time. I hope Leo hurries and beats him up so we can go home. I wanted to watch something at ten."

Don's no pushover, but we all knew that he wouldn't last long with his lungs full of smoke and tar and after a few minutes, Leo had him pinned on the ground. Then Fearless did something that I never would have expected. He grabbed Don's bo out of his hands and the cigarettes off the ground. Raph started to get up, figuring that Leo would trot on home to Splinter with the bo. But Leo flung both the cigarettes and the bo off the rooftop and into space. I could hear a small clatter as it hit the ground across the street.

Mikey jumped to his feet, walked right up to Leo and punched him in the face. Don was totally stunned, with his mouth hanging open. Mikey shouted, "He's not even worth properly dishonoring now, is he?" He grabbed Don by the arm and marched him away.

Raph shrugged at me, pointed at his two distraught brothers and said, "I have to follow the disgraced party. See ya."

Leo sat on the edge of the building and stared at the alley across the street. I knew he was watching them as they searched for Don's bo. I sat next to him and said, "Don't you think that was a little bit soul crushing?"

He watched the ground again. "Ah, Mikey found it." Heaved a sigh of relief. He didn't respond for a while and I was just about to go back inside when he said, "I feel old."

"I feel old too."

He laughed. "You're twenty six. That's not old."

"Well, I'm not young either. I'm in a youthful no-man's land. Well, what are we going to do with Don? We can't just let him keep smoking. He's coughing like an old man. He's already made up of caffeine and sugar. Like he needs any other chemical in his body."

"I'll think of something. I always do."

"Maybe we should threaten him with Shady Pines."

He gave a weak smile.

We went back to the lair and found Don locked in the lab. Of course. Raph was hitting the punching bag. Of course. And Mikey was doing the dishes in the bathtub. Leo left me in the living room and said to Splinter, who was tending to some tea on the stove, "Can we have a word? It's important."

"Yes, son."

He took the tea off the stove and they went into Splinter's bedroom. So I helped Mikey wash dishes in the bathroom. He washed and I rinsed them at the bathroom sink. And then stupid Raph walked in the bathroom and lifted the toilet seat like he was going to piss with us standing there. So I smacked Raph upside the head and left the room. As soon as Raph shut the bathroom door, then Don had to go in and ask what they were doing. So I got a full view of him peeing anyway.

But I didn't exactly look away. I have this voyeurism issue. It's like watching guys in a zoo. Like in their natural habitat. Don leaned in the doorway and said, "Raph, do you have any left?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Mikey was still bent over the edge of the bathtub and handed Don a plate to rinse. "I think that's a really bad idea."

Don rinsed the plate and said, "Just one for the road, you know."

"No, I'm getting rid of the rest," Raph said. I couldn't see him anymore because Don was blocking my view. But he was moving around so I think he was finished.

Then Don says, "Don't touch me! Wash your hands!"

And Raph wiped his hands all over the top of Don's head as he left the bathroom.

Master Splinter and Leo came out of the bedroom and then we had dinner. Somebody smashed a chair last week and so Leo stood up, holding his plate. Raph hinted around that he should go sit in the living room, but he said it would be rude with a guest present. So I got up and sat on the couch and forced him to sit in my chair at the table.

Raph passed a dish to Don, who leered away and said, "Are your hands clean?"

Raph pressed his hand down on Don's food.

Splinter said, "Raphael, give your plate to your brother."

So Raph had to switch plates with Don.

After dinner Leo gathered us all up in the living room. Splinter stood behind him, watching. All four of us were squeezed onto the couch together and it felt like we were in a firing squad for some reason. I was sure that Leo was going to give us a speech about the evils of tobacco and how it would bring down society. Leo and Splinter took a while to get themselves together and we sat on the couch and listened to Mikey fiddle with the guitar for a while.

But then Leo said, "Michelangelo, please put that away." He was using full names. We all knew that we were about to get a serious talk. "It probably hasn't escaped anyone's notice that I've been on edge lately."

Raph glanced down the line at the rest of us and shifted uncomfortably. "Look, we don't need to talk about this."

"Yes, we do. Especially after what happened earlier," Leo said. "And I'm sorry for that, Donatello."

Don shrugged. Not ready to forgive, I guess.

Leo continued. "I suppose you've all heard about the woman who was found dead in the alley a few blocks from April's apartment."

"No," Mikey said.

"Yeah, I remember," Don said.

Raph and I didn't answer. Don instantly realized that we already knew what Leo was about to tell them and he crossed his arms and gave us both accusing looks. He talks to me a lot more than the others, so he's probably steamed that I had a secret from him.

Leo sighed. Obviously, he didn't want to retell the whole story from the beginning. "A woman was found in a dumpster at the corner of Cherry and Division."

"That's right by your place, April," Mikey said with concern. "I hope the guy doesn't live nearby."

"Well," he said as he sagged a little. I think his middle name should be Atlas. "Well, I'm the one who found the woman in the dumpster. I called 911 and the police took her body away."

Don didn't seem to find the story very interesting. "Yeah, and?"

"Have you ever found corpse?" Leo asked. He was getting irritated, like he wanted to yell. "I could smell it before I even got into the alley."

I looked over at Raph to see how he was taking this detailed description. He was looking at the other side of the room, mentally isolating.

"And I hoped it was a dog or a raccoon. I opened the dumpster and saw some garbage bags stacked on the top. I could see an arm and I knew that it was human. I still don't understand why I moved the bags away. I knew that she was dead already. I should have just called it in and left."

"So you looked at it?" Don asked, clearly disgusted.

"Yeah, I looked at it. And I'm not going to describe what I saw, Michelangelo, so don't even ask."

I looked over and saw that Mikey's mouth was open; a question on his lips. Or his mouth anyway.

I didn't want to him to give us any details. I was feeling flushed and nervous, like I didn't want to know what gruesome stuff had been eating up his brain lately. "I'll say that if I ever saw any of you in that condition…" He had to swallow and regroup for a second. "Well, she was obviously raped and just left in the garbage."

"How could you tell?" Mikey asked. He was determined to ask questions. To have the whole picture painted for him.

"Didn't you just hear him?" Raph asked. "I don't think the tell-tale signs of rape are something that he wants to describe to you."

Leo said, "I'm sorry if…"

I could see that Mikey's forehead was furrowed and his mouth was open. He had more burning questions. "You said that you'd die if you saw any of us like that. How would somebody rape any of us? Is that even possible? Well, April could be raped."

Leo's eyes fell on me and there was a flash of panic that I don't like to see in his eyes. He said to Mikey, "That hadn't escaped me, Michelangelo."

"Do not interrupt," Splinter said quietly.

"Sorry, Sensei. Sorry, Leo."

Don was softened a little. He wasn't crossing his arms at us anymore. "That must have been hard on you. Why didn't you tell us earlier? They found her over a week ago."

"You didn't trust us, did you?" Mikey said. I was ready to pop him one. He always has to say exactly what everybody is thinking, but wants to keep quiet, you know.

Raph closed his eyes.

Mikey wouldn't give up. "And why aren't Raph and April all shocked? They knew didn't they? You're always telling Raph stuff? Why?"

Leo was borderline yelling at him. "Why? Because I can't stop picturing it in my mind. Do you think I want to tell you so that you can ask me questions about every detail? And Raph and April figured it out on their own."

I can't remember how the rest of the meeting went. It ended pretty well. Don offered to give Leo his leftovers, so that meant that he had forgiven him.

When I was on my way out the door, Leo ran after me and stopped me. He said, "I'm sorry that you've had to be a part of this."

All I said was, "You know that I love you, right?" It felt well timed at the moment. Looks strange on reflection.

He just nodded a little. That's all he ever does. I don't think he'll ever give us more than that.

"You look exhausted. Maybe you should get some sleep."

He rubbed his eyes and said, "No, I have to stay up and help Splinter come up with a detox plan for Don. Doesn't help that he's smarter than all of us put together. Sneaky little bastard. It'll be hard. And I've been trying not to sleep too much lately anyway."

Took me a second to catch on. "Bad dreams?"

"Meditation helps a little. I just picture her sometimes. Cut…" He shook his head to force the thoughts away. "Maybe I'll have some extra time tonight…"

Then there was a loud crash and Mikey screamed, "RAPH! WHAT DID YOU DO! LEO, RAPH JUST BROKE MY BED IN HALF!"

Leo closed his eyes, like he was trying to block it out.

Raph's screaming voice answered, "IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL AND I WAS TRYING TO FIX YOUR SHELF!"

"I HATE SHARING A ROOM WITH YOU! I CAN NEVER GET ANY SLEEP! ALL YOU DO IS JACK OFF AND IT KEEPS ME UP ALL THE TIME!"

"Maybe I should get going," I said, creeping towards the door.

"HEY, I DO NOT!"

Leo said, "Yeah, my children need me."

"PUT MR. BEAR DOWN OR I'LL BUST YOUR FACE!"

I hate it when he says that. My children. So I marched back into the lair and into Mikey and Raph's bedroom. Raph was standing on Mike's snapped bed, holding Mr. Bear at sai-point. "Raph, get off his bed!" I said. "And put down Mr. Bear. What's wrong with you? You know better than to stand on Mike's bed. You know that it's tied together with rope. And Mikey, don't get into an argument about gross nighttime habits. You know that you'll lose."

Raph got off the bed and threw Mr. Bear at Mikey so hard that he tipped over.

Leo was hovering outside the bedroom door, waiting for me. "Thanks for making my children mind," he said.

I think that was a big exaggeration because Mr. Bear flew out the doorway after me. I took the opportunity to give the Leo the kiss that he had dodged the other day. He didn't react, although on my way out he called after me in his manipulative sexy voice, "You know, I knew you were going to do that."

"Yeah, sure."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don called me eight times today and it's only 4pm. I think he's officially lost it. He sounds hysterical. Raph locked him in his room and he and Leo are taking turns sitting against it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Got 14 Facebook messages from Don. My favorite is, "Help! My brothers are holding me hostage!"


	41. Chapter 41

_Really short one today._

Dear Diary,

Just figured out that I'm wearing my underwear inside out. Set it as my Facebook status.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Yeah. Well. Got interesting feedback.

**April O'Neil**: Just figured out that I've been wearing my underwear inside out all day.

**Leonardo Hamato**: Again? Lol

**Raph Hamato**: Yummy

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: Send pics please

**Leonardo Hamato**: In all seriousness, April. This is probably not the sort of thing to publish on your Facebook.

**Lewis Caldwell**: send pics 2 me 2 just jkng

**Gentry Harris**: thats funneh

**Trevor Allen Sterling**: Haven't changed have you?

**Raph Hamato**: Hey, what are you still doing on her facebook shitface

**Donatello Adonis Hamato**: If you're ever in need of ladies underwear, Mikey has a nice secret stash. He likes to play dress up and pretend that he's Princess Diana.

**Leonardo Hamato**: Princess Diana was a great woman and she's at rest. Get a life, you smoker.

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: do not

**Raph Hamato**: nice comeback

**Hiram Kooper**: Are you coming to the pool hall sweetie? Been missing you

**Donatello Adonis Hamato**: I need a cig so badly right now and I'm hungry. Please let me out of here. April bring your inside out panties over here and make them listen to reason

**Susan Smith**: Just like that time at the Rainbow Club, huh April? Lol How are you doing girl?

**Raph Hamato**: I told you id do you laundry you dont need to turn them inside out for more wear lmfao

**Gentry Harris**: hey raph whats up mikeys a good kisser

**April O'Neil**: Raph, yes Trevor is still on my Facebook. We're still friends. Susan, yeah I told you to keep that a secret. But no really. When are we going to go out again? How's Emily? Don, I'll sneak you a file in a pie later today. Lewis, you're a pig. Gentry, just for your information, Raph's a great kisser. I think you really missed out on a treat. Mikey, what size panties do you wear? Leo, how are you doing with things? Hiram, yeah we'll stop by soon.


	42. Chapter 42

_I remember the incompetently told sex jokes about the ashes and the woody from when I was a teenager. I tried to remember it as best I could. I was their age when I heard the conversation. Sorry if it offends, but it's always made me laugh so…_

Dear Diary,

Went over to visit my boys. Don's doing better. Turns out his addiction was more a habit thing. He's bored and needs a hobby that doesn't involve breeding anthrax or hacking into government satellites. They let him out of his bedroom after a day or so.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The problem child has moved in. And I don't mean Raph. Mikey climbed in the window a few hours ago and his greeting to me went something like, "I'm never going back there! I hate all of them! They treat me like I'm a little kid!"

"How?"

"Well, Leo yelled at me and called me a child because I asked if I could sit on his lap."

I stared at him for a full second. "Why would you do that?"

"Well I tried to sit on Master Splinter's lap but he told me I was too heavy and he pinched me." Mikey sat the table and fidgeted with the center piece. I could see that he was swinging his feet under the chair.

I remember covering my mouth at the idea of Splinter pinching him. "That's the funniest thing you've ever said."

"Well, I don't want to go back there. If they think I'm a child, then I'll just leave. They don't need me around. I'll show them. I can take care of myself. I'm a ninja… damn it." He had to add a swear word to sound tough. He's sworn heavily before but it's usually when he's lost.

Then it was quiet while he watched me stare at my textbook. I could tell that his pretty eyes were getting bigger by the second, waiting for me to look up at him. I resisted the pressure as long as possible. But I had to look up at him. And then… pow! I was hit with a punch of cute-Mikey-face. I said, "You can stay here, I guess."

"Cool! It'll be like a slumber party! Boy, I wish I had Mr. Bear. Let's build a fort!"

"I will not doing anything so childish."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Sitting in the fort. Mikey's in the kitchen getting more nachos. We're sitting in here with the lights off and a flashlight and telling stories. Well, he's telling stories.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The bedsheet and chair fort was actually fun.

"Why do they treat me like a baby?" he said, holding the flashlight up to his chin. He thought it made him look scary. Made him look more yellow.

"Well, honestly…" I didn't want to say something that would hurt his feelings. "You sort of act like a baby."

He made a face and said, "I'm going to tell a story about the time that Raph slept in the tunnels."

"Was he hurt?"

Mikey filled his mouth with nachos and I hard time understanding him for a while. "No, he was mad at Leo. This was on a year when he was second to oldest and they shared a room. Leo's real neat and Raph's a big slob. So Leo's always cleaning Raph's side of the room. Then Raph got mad and said that he wasn't going to live with us anymore. But we were about 12 then, so he didn't really have many resources. Plus he couldn't go topside. So he took his mattress and put it out in one of the tunnels."

"That sounds like Butch." He would rather sleep in a bug and rat infested tunnel than deal with Leo cleaning up after him.

"So he slept out there for over a week and then Leo went out to find him because he missed him. He'd never say it. He said that he was screwing up our sparring or something. But he went out there and what do you think he found?"

Mikey always finishes his stories like that. And I fall for it every time and go, "What! What!"

"Raph was sleeping in the tunnel on the mattress and it was all soaked through and stinky and he hadn't taken his blankets with him so he was freezing cold and shivery and Leo said that there were rats sitting on the mattress with him."

"That's awful! Wait, did you make that up?"

Mikey shrugged. "Parts are true. Well, it's pretty much true. The rat thing is… well, I think it's true. Raph won't tell us when bad stuff happens to him. We had to guess. He had all these little bite marks and Don said that the rats were biting him at night. And he had pneumonia. So Leo brought him back to the lair and Master Splinter took care of him."

"That was a sad story. Now I'm depressed."

"Why don't you tell a story?"

Me tell a story? He always asks and I can never think of anything. I know interesting stuff has happened to me, but I seem to get amnesia when he asks. "I don't know. I can't think of anything."

"You're boring, like Don aren't you? That's why you talk to him so much."

Sigh. Always with the obvious stuff that nobody wants to acknowledge. "Maybe."

"Maybe it's his high pitched girl voice," he said, licking salsa off his hands. "He sounds just like that Justin Bieber guy."

"Oh, he does not."

"Does too."

"Does not. Bieber sounds like a little girl."

He really brings out my mature side.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Yeah, an interesting night with that little monkey. I assumed he would sleep on the couch because I ordered him to and then while I was just getting into bed and was ready to turn off the lights, he yells from out in the hallway, "Look out!" and runs at my bed. He jumped and his wake bounced me off onto the floor.

"Oops." He didn't sound very apologetic. Especially because he got right up and started jumping on the bed.

"I'm going to sleep now," I said, hitting him with my pillow. "And you can join me and sleep or else go out there and shut up. I don't care what you do. Just be quiet."

He threw himself down in a sitting position and said, "Oh, I'll sleep in here. I promise I'll be good."

"Good. Shut up. Good night."

So I turned off the light and got into bed. I knew he was going to cuddle me. It was only a matter of when. So I thought I would change things up a little cuddled him instead.

"Ah, you DO love me," he said. "What are we going to put on our wedding invitations?"

He didn't talk for a while and then he said, "I know I act like a kid. But… being an adult is hard… I don't like it. I understand just as much as everybody else and more about some things and I wish that they'd stop pretending that I'm stupid."

"I don't think you're stupid. You should quit saying that."

"You're in the minority," he yawned.

I felt the bed moving as soon as I feel asleep and I woke up to find Raph lying across the end of the bed. I kicked him in the arm and said, "What are you doing?" He scowled and didn't answer. I moved out of Mikey's arms and he whimpered in his sleep. "What are you doing? You're bleeding."

"I'm fine. I just need to rest my eyes." He rolled over onto his stomach and I was sure that he would do more than rest his eyes.

I kicked him again. "I don't care if you're fine. I don't want you to bleed on the bed sheets. Get up so I can bandage you." I took him into the bathroom and he sat on the toilet lid while I perched on the edge of the bathtub and inspected him. I have a first aid kit made up in an old tackle box that I found down in the Second Time Around. "You're just a big walking scar now, aren't you?" He didn't answer. He didn't look mad or really upset though. He's not the most communicative guy in the world.

He had a big gash down his side. It wasn't really big but it was deep enough to go through his carapace. It's weird when you see under their carapaces because you can see the skin underneath. It's actually really cool. "Had some fun tonight?"

"A little," he said, coughing.

"You been sleeping in the tunnels with the rats again?"

He sat back a little in surprise. "How'd you hear about that?"

"Mikey was telling an incoherent story about you earlier."

He watched while I fixed him up. He's one of those freaks that likes to look at his own wounds. "I think I found the guy who poisoned me. I'm going to tell the others at home tomorrow. The guy isn't going anywhere."

"Who is it?"

Didn't answer again. So I'm not in the loop on this one. Whatever.

"Hey, whassgoinon?" Mikey was standing in the doorway rubbing his eyes. "Where'd you go? I got lonely. Hey, Raphie."

"Hey, kid," Raph said in a really patronizing tone.

So I had two of them in the bed now. We all headed back to bed and I asked, "Alright, who wants me?"

Mikey held his arms out and said, "Me! Me!"

Raph growled and rolled over, facing the wall.

"I'm going to kiss you goodnight," Mikey said, in his cutest voice.

"Did you brush your teeth?"

Pause. "Yes." That meant no. But I let him do it anyway.  
So Raph tried to entertain us for a while by telling dirty sex jokes, but they didn't make any sense because he mixed up all the punch lines.

I remember it went something like…

"There was this guy walking in a park and he had a wooden penis," Raph said.

Mikey made a clicking-thinking noise and said, "Why would he have one made out of wood? Sounds like a poorly made prosthetic and, yes, I get the woody inference. Sounds like it would make it hard to walk."

"Is that what they called station wagons with wood paneling?" I asked.

Mikey shrugged. "I could go look it up. That's interesting. I never thought about it."

"AND THEN…" Raph realized that the joke was getting away from him. "Then he meets a girl and she blows on it."

I said, "I don't get it. Why would she do that if it's made of wood? He wouldn't feel anything. That doesn't make sense."

"Is it like George Washington with his wooden dentures?" Mikey asked.

Raph said, "Well, don't blame me. I didn't write the joke."

"Are we still talking about the cab driver?" Mikey asked.

Raph was getting confused and confusion leads to frustration and frustration leads to broken furniture. "No, this is the woman at the party… wait, no, this was the widow."

I tried to clarify. "I've heard some of these before. The widow is blowing on her husband's ashes…"

"Yeah, that's right!" Raph sat up in bed. "Yeah, she blows on the ashes and says…"

"Hey, I get it," Mikey said. "It still isn't funny."

He was right. I could feel Raph's hands wandering around under the covers and I got a little nervous for a second. "Raph, what are you doing under there? Your hands had better not come any closer than that."

"I lost my keys. They were on my belt."

Mikey asked, "Why are you wearing your belt to bed?"

"Because I'll lose it otherwise."

* * *

Dear Diary,

So I survived the night sandwiched between two teenage boys. What do you think was the first thing I heard when I woke up? Raph saying, "Hey, where's my belt?"

All four of them were in the living room. Raph was looking for his belt. The other three were at the kitchen table. Don was drinking coffee and trying not let us see his hands shaking.

Leo stood up and motioned me to his chair. Mikey made a dramatic bow behind him, imitating his gallantry. "So what did you guys do? Did you have a good time?" Leo asked.

Mikey rushed forward and gushed, "Yeah, it was cool. Me and April made a fort and then Raph came over we told oral sex jokes."

Don choked on his coffee.

Leo's eyes narrowed at Raph, who gave him a cheesy grin of guilt and shrugged. See, he doesn't always fly off the handle. "Best he doesn't learn about it on the streets, you know. Anyway, I have more important stuff…" Then he looked at me and clammed up.

"What?" They all looked at each other and avoided me for a second. "I'll just wait in the bedroom until you're done with your conference, shall I? Can I take some food with me?"

I filled a plate with my breakfast and ate in the bedroom. As soon as I shut the door I heard Don say, "Great, Raph. Now she's mad and sarcastic."

So I sit here eating sausage and writing in my diary. I know they're talking about that guy who poisoned Raph. Sometimes they include me in this stuff and sometimes not. I think because I was hurt by this attack in an indirect way that they won't include me.

* * *

Dear Diary,

They're going after that guy tomorrow night. I'll go wait at the Dungeon de Turtle Med Station and sit with Splinter. It'll keep him occupied and they might need triage when they get back.


	43. Chapter 43

_You never see the preparations when superheros go out on a mission. I've always wondered about it. And they never take stuff with them. Just themselves. If it were me, I'd want to be kitted up. I tried to refill a printer cartridge and remember going, "How'd I get ink on my foot?" And I also remember making soap and going, "This is definitely not worth dying over." Been doing some research of a certain kind for an original story that I'm writing and I came upon some facts that just happened to link in here. I won't reveal them until later._

Dear Diary,

Today is the big day. Nervous for their safety. Also nervous about sitting with Splinter all day. Not really knowing what to do with an older man… er… rat. Should I take stuff to do with him? What does he do in the lair all day?

* * *

Dear Diary,

Took awhile for the boys to get on their way. They were understandably jumpy. Raph looked like he was ready to kill already and I steered clear of him. He was fingering his sais while he sat around waiting for Mikey. Mikey and Don took forever. Leo was standing there screaming at them to hurry up for over an hour. Don was packing everything they own and then Raph pointed out that he certainly was not carrying anything. So then Leo threw his hands in the air as Don resorted the stuff to lighten the load. Mikey carried a backpack full of medical things and Don carried another bag with… I suspect explosives and lock picking equipment and electronical gadgets. Leo was about to breathe fire at them because at the last minute Mikey suggested bringing sandwiches, which meant that he wanted to eat something before they left. So they had to wait for him to fix his sandwich and then they all sat around tapping their feet and looking at the clock while he ate. Then when he had 1/3 of the sandwich left, Raph had to go and make a sandwich too. Leo threatened to give them all up for adoption and become an only child.

They finally left and then Leo had to recall them all back to regroup because Mikey wanted to use English time and he'd left his phone at my place and he didn't want to use Raph's watch because it was set for military time and he can't read it and he's forbidden to change the settings. So he took Don's phone and Don used Raph's watch.

Then they finally got going.

It was just me and Master Splinter. He was humming to himself and picking up the cyclone of destruction that they had left in their wake. "Want help?" I asked.

"If you'd like, April. Take these to Michelangelo's room. I'm not sure how his comic books would have helped with the mission…" he muttered to himself as he handed me the stack.

Then he handed me a ball of yarn and some knitting needles. "Whose are these?"

"Those belong to Donatello," he said distractedly as he gathered garbage in his arms.

"Don knits! He never told me." Mildly jealous at the lack of confidence.

"He learned so that he could make Christmas presents last year. He never learned sufficiently to make anything more than a chain stretched six times the length of the south tunnel. I believe that he's trying again."

I wondered if he was teased for it. Then I decided probably not. I know they can all sew at a basic level. They've had to do everything themselves and learn how to make everything last. Sort of like pioneers.

I remember the time they were all really set to make their own soap. Raph said that it was too stressful because Don kept telling him not to touch the lye because it could kill him. He said that it wasn't really his intention to die in the pursuit of soap and that it ruined the enjoyment of the activity. He'd rather be dirty. He compared it to doing laundry with the added risk that touching the detergent would kill you.

I remember when Leo tried to reuse the printer cartridges and use the refill kits because they're cheaper. It makes sense if you think about it. The cartridge is still good. It just needs ink. And so he tried to refill the cartridge and I have pictures of him with blackened hands. Even the bottom of one of his feet was ink covered and he couldn't remember how it happened. He said it was like a nightmare where the printer cartridge was bleeding to death and there was nothing he could do to stop it. So it proved to be a waste of money. My money, to tell the truth. But it was worth a laugh at Mr. Perfect's expense.

Then Splinter turned on the TV and kept it running in the background while he puttered around in the kitchen. I put the tea kettle on while he made lunch and I swear he was smiling about it. I asked him why he had the TV on when he wasn't watching and he said, "In case there is a news bulletin."

Ah. Stupid me. Splinter turned to set the table and saw that it was covered with dirty dishes and other junk. He sighed and said, "Raphael, will you ever learn?"

"This is Raph's mess?" It was enough mess to account for about ten people.

"Wherever he goes, chaos and destruction follow," he said as he dumped a stack of dirty dishes in the sink. "Do not misunderstand me. I love all my sons. But I do not always love the things they do."

"I know the feeling," I muttered.

"Horse races. Gambling. That Johnny No Thumbs." He threw the newspaper into the trash with great force.

He didn't say much, but he might as well have given a whole speech and I would have applauded at the end.

After we ate lunch and had tea, we watched "The Puerile and the Fidgety." He said to me, "You must help me remember what happens today because they will want a report."

So I wrote down a running commentary:

"Connor came back to Arbor Falls today. She was being held hostage by Jose. Don't know where Jose is. Holy crap. Ford is still in jail in Morocco. What's up with that? Why didn't Javier look for him yet? He's busy skanking around with Jill. She's such a slut. Rebecca found out that she's pregnant. It could belong to Bailey or that other guy who died last month. The one that Leo said looked like Tom Cruise and it made him hate him for no reason. And Janelle found out that her father isn't dead. What a whiny brat. All she's doing is yelling at people hysterically while everybody else says how much they like her and feel bad for what she's going through. Who cares? Oh, Joey's going to try to leave town again because his girlfriend was murdered by that serial killer and it turned out to be his dad. Is Eva still dead?"

They're always trying to leave town, but it's like they're all tied to the "Welcome to Arbor Falls" sign and they never make it past the airport.

Then Splinter shot up out of his seat and ran into the tunnel. I didn't know what he was doing but then I could hear a loud and agonized cry from outside. It was definitely one of the boys. Then there was some yelling and I could tell it was Leo. The crying and screaming got louder and louder as it came towards the tunnel, but it was slow coming, like they were carrying somebody. I didn't go out to see what had happened. I had a feeling that I would regret knowing.

Leo came in the door backwards. He, Mikey and Splinter were carrying Don, who was wailing so loudly that I had to cover my ears. He was thrashing in their arms and they were having a hard time holding on to him. I couldn't see Raph.

"Raph! Hurry up!" Leo screamed back into the tunnel.

Good. So he was alive and still with them. I put him out of my mind and followed them into the infirmary.

In the infirmary, the strangest thing was happening. Don was crying like he would die, but he didn't have any apparent marks on him besides the usual battle scratches, which I've come to take for granted. Mikey had a flashlight and was trying to shine it in Don's face, but he kept pushing him away. Leo was at the computer, looking at symptoms. Don was fighting Mikey and screaming and then Splinter practically body slammed him back into the bed and held him down so that Mikey could look into his eyes.

"Pupils are super dilated," Mikey said, throwing the flashlight aside.

It took me a second to catch up with the full implication of what he'd just said. "Wait, did they poison him like they did Raph?"

Nobody answered. Speaking of… "Where's Raph anyway?"

Leo looked around urgently and then went into the living room and I went along. It was pretty hard to think with the wailing in the next room. Raph was standing in the living room, looking around vacantly. He seemed kind of lost.

"Raph?" Leo asked, sounded like he could pull his hair out. If he had any hair.

Raph didn't react. He picked up a book and looked at the inside cover and then set it down again.

"Hamato Raphael! Listen to me!" Leo said.

Still he didn't look at him.

I grabbed Leo by the arm. "Did he get hit on the head, by any chance?" He was pretty beaten up. He looked a little harder hit than Don. But that's not unusual.

Leo looked doubtful, but said, "Raph, is something wrong?"

Raph flinched as Leo came closer to him and actually backed away. There was something wrong with his eyes. I couldn't place it at first. But it was like more and more numbers were adding up to get a really wrong answer.

"Why is he screaming like that?" Raph asked. He didn't sound like himself either. Didn't sound as… I don't know… Brooklyn as usual.

"We don't know," I said. I took a few steps towards him and he backed all the way up until his shell hit the wall. "Hey, don't worry. What's up? Are you hurt?"

Leo wouldn't normally act like this and I think the persistent sounds of anguish from the other room were getting to him. "I've had enough of this, Raph. Get in there and help me!"

"Stop yelling at me. I don't know what you want." He looked away from us at the floor and I noticed that he was tearing up. He never does that and Leo instantly realized that something was wrong with him.

"Get Splinter," I told him.

He was in the infirmary before I finished saying that. Raph kept looking at the floor and then asked me, "Do you know who you are?"

I paused. Strange. "Do you?"

He didn't respond for a few seconds and then shook his head no. He looked ashamed of himself and said in the most pathetic tone I've ever heard, "I'm sorry. I'm trying."

"Don't worry. We're your family. Don't be scared. LEO!"

He jumped when I yelled. Leo came out of the infirmary. "What now?"

"He has amnesia or something. He can't remember who he is."

Leo stared at me for a second like he was hoping I would say I was joking. Don's voice was still just as piercing as when they first carried him in the door.

It took a long time to get Raph to communicate with us. We sat him on his bed and he wrung his hands, misty-eyed and afraid, refusing to answer us. Leo was obnoxiously persistent and wouldn't give it a rest. Finally, Raph said, in desperation, "I don't know! I don't remember! I'm sorry! Why are you all looking at me? Did I do something wrong?"

I thought he would be more scared of Splinter, but he was as scared of him as the rest of us and only flinched a little when he came forward. "No, son. We'll let you sleep for now. It may put you at ease. We'll talk to you in the morning. Remember that you are safe here."

I don't think Don's screaming in the other room gave him the same impression. As we left the room, he grabbed my hand and said, "Pretty girl. Will you stay with me for a while?"

His voice sounded so different. It was still the same pitch, but much more even and measured. And he kept giving us this cow-eyed look. I didn't really want to stay. There was something really creepy about him and I wanted to go to Don. I hadn't been able to see him yet and I felt like I wanted to take care of him. He's a little bit more like my baby than the others, I guess.

But I told him that I would. So I sat next to him on his bed and watched him. He looked around the room and said, "I know that I can fight. I don't remember learning. Is all this mess mine? I must be disgusting."

I actually laughed a little. "Yeah, you are."

"The one who wears blue. He was yelling at me. He does he hate me?"

This was getting to be too much. He studied me with his big brown eyes, like a little child. "No, he doesn't hate you. He's scared. He's your brother. He's your best friend too."

"Why does he keep screaming?" he asked, pointing towards the infirmary.

"He was drugged…" Drugged. I looked harder at his huge eyes. Yup. He also had huge, drugged pupils. "And I think you've been drugged too. Just lay down here."

"Okay," he said in the most docile manner I've seen from any of them.

I stopped him and took of his belt and bandanna. He watched me the whole time.

"Who are you?"

"I'm April. I'm your friend."

He watched me while I put his equipment aside. "You seem nice."

I sat next to his bed while he lay down. He didn't close his eyes and kept watching me. He said, "Is someone trying to hurt us?"

"Yeah, I think so."

He closed his eyes and looked so sweet that I almost choked. He said, "I'm sorry I can't remember."

It took awhile for him to go to sleep. He kept opening his eyes and looking back at me to see if I was still there. Finally, I worked my hand out of his and went to check on the others.

"How's Butch?" Mikey asked with a similar cow-eyed expression.

"Not good. He can't remember any of us and he's acting like… I don't know…"

"Like Mike," Leo groaned as he paged through a medical textbook.

"I act like an amnesiac?" Mikey asked. He was hovering over Don, who was still screaming and thrashing around. They'd tied him down to the bed.

Don was in absolute agony. I asked, "Why don't you give him something?"

"Mikey thinks it's a bad idea," Leo said.

"Like it could do any harm. Just give him something to make him go to sleep."

Splinter moved closer to the bed and said, "I believe that would be a good idea."

So that settled it and Mikey hunted in the medicine chest. He gave him a shot of something. I didn't check to see what he gave him, but it put him to sleep almost instantly.

"Poor baby," I said. Poor baby was right. He was shuddering and weeping in his sleep.

"Ah, silence," Mikey said.

As soon as we could hear ourselves think, Leo had to go into a business meeting. "Both poisoned. Why'd they have to get Raph twice? They'll pay for that."

I could tell from his tone that they definitely would pay for it. "Well, last time it wore off," I said. "Maybe we just wait it out."

"But these symptoms are different," Splinter said. Poor Splinter.

"Yeah, a poison that gives one guy amnesia and the other… I don't know what you call that…" He motioned to Don, who was twitching and whimpering in his sleep and curled up into the fetal position.

"Well, what the hell happened, Leo?" I asked, suddenly remembering that it helps sometimes to blame others. "You took four ninjas over there to fight this guy and you come back with two poisoned?"

He sat down heavily, like an old man and said, "I don't know what happened."

Mikey said, "I do. They both drank some water. We didn't."

Leo looked at him suspiciously. "When did that happen?"

"When we were in the lab and you were giving that epic revenge speech and Don and Raph were behind the equipment. There was some bottled water on the table back there and they swiped some."

Sounds like a professional operation to me. Their leader confronts the bad guy while his soldiers hide and chug water. "And what were you doing?" I asked.

Mikey pretended that he was shocked that I would question his dedication to the cause. "I was listening to Leo. Trying to anyway. It wasn't like much was going on. That guy was the only one there and he admitted to everything. Leo asked if he was the one who poisoned his brother and then he said a lot of stuff about Hamato clan pride and all…"

"Why don't I tell it?" Leo asked, crossing his arms.

Mikey paused as he sucked in another lungful of air. "…Then the doctor or whatever he is said that he was the one responsible for the poisoning and he's trying to off us so he can steal something from the Smithsonian so he can power an evil device to make money. I guess. Anyway, Raph was complaining to Don that it was dry in there and he was thirsty and Leo had moved into his graphic guilt description of the damage that had been done and the doctor laughed at him and so Don and Raph looked around the room for a drinking fountain and found the bottles of water and took a few."

"Did they bring any back with them?" Splinter asked hopefully.

"No, we forgot our stuff when Don dropped to the ground screaming and wailing for no reason. Slipped my mind. And the doctor disappeared when we were all distracted."

"I should have followed him," Leo said.

We spent a few minutes convincing Leo that it was actually a good thing that he'd incompetently let the bad guy get away because we'll need him later for information.

So I'm spending the night here in case I'm needed. I can't bring myself to leave Leo, Mikey and Splinter alone with these two. Leo will probably look after Raph. I think looking after Don will fall to me. Mikey's better with medical stuff than us three and he's been doing research. Splinter will look after all of us. Thank God for him.


	44. Chapter 44

_I've wanted to give them a legal volume for some time. Guess my legal studies are leaking into their world._

Dear Diary,

Spent most of today with Don. He's still the same. Well, Mike won't sedate him anymore, but thankfully he isn't screaming and wailing anymore. Thankfully at least for us. I don't think it's good for him. He's in an almost catatonic state, but he's weeping silently and his body racks with it. He makes eye contact with us and responds when we touch him, but I'm not sure how much he's really taking in.

Mikey just said, "I don't know how Don can do it." He's looking at another medical volume and he just tossed it aside. "I feel like my brain in melting. I don't mind the nursing. I actually like it. It's the research that makes me feel like my brain's falling out."

Just told him that I'm here to help. So he just set me to looking through twelve books that I could have beaten someone to death with.

"This one's called an 'ALR." What's that?"

"Oops. I don't know what this is. Huh." He threw it aside and it crashed into a pile of hubcaps next to Mr. Bones. "We have so many books and crap around here. Donny brings every book home that he finds. He nearly jizzes himself when he doesn't understand what it is. Something new to learn you know."

We both watched him convulsing on the bed. Too depressing. "I'm going to have a walk around." I say goodbye to our Donny when I leave the room. I don't know if he knows it, but I feel like I should do it anyway just in case. So I cuddled him and went into the living room.

Splinter was showing Raph the photo album.

"We look poor," Raph said simply.

"We didn't have much," Splinter said, turning a page.

Raph contentedly pointed a picture. "But we look happy. You must be a good father."

I woke Raph up this morning. He didn't punch me in the nose this time either. He looked up at me like a lamb, totally empty of worry and burden and said, "I had a good dream."

What do guys with amnesia dream about? We dream based on our memories, don't we? "What was it about?"

"You."

It's so interesting to watch him. But Leo's not happy with it at all. He keeps losing patience with him and snapping at him when he doesn't remember the most basic things, like that it was his turn to wash the dishes last night. I think he's just having trouble dealing with two invalids at the same time. It's like all his mind wants to be in the infirmary with Don because he's obviously in the most pain, but Raph is walking around, obviously not right. And he isn't in there helping him. Even Raph yelling at us and smashing things would be a relief to us all right now. But I feel guilty about it too. He seems happy right now. I mean, if we had a choice, should we even put him back to normal? Would that be right?

Leo was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking some of Raph's home brew that I use to clean my drains. "Want to join me?"

Splinter called to him from the living room, "Do not drink too much. You are needed."

Leo rolled his eyes. "Yes, Sensei. But let me register that it would be a great relief to be drunk right now."

"Duly noted," I said, pouring a glass for myself. I sat next to him and saw that his eyes were very bloodshot. "You're about to cry, aren't you?"

"Yeah, probably," he groaned. He took his mask off and flung it into the kitchen sink. "Needs washing."

"Raph'll… No, I guess Raph won't do it," I said thoughtlessly. I took a drink and felt like puking. Leo was just sipping casually.

Leo was weeping really lightly, but his body tends to do that to him as a signal to go to bed. So it's the weirdest thing. His mind is clear and he acts like normal, but he's crying. Raph usually stomps his feet and orders him to bed. Sometimes he physically drags him. Once he knocked him out and threw him in bed. Just before that Raph had said, "You can't be everything to everybody all the time, you douche bag!" Then he punched him in the face. Ah, Raph love.

There was a muffled cry from the infirmary and Leo was half out of his seat before I even registered the sound. Mikey called out, "It's all good. I'm on it."

Going to make some lunch and force them all to eat.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Caught Raph in the bathroom looking at himself in the mirror. He was tracing his scars with his fingers.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey and Raph are in an epic quest to out-cute each other today. Raph was sitting on the couch with Splinter, complacently watching whatever was on and occasionally asking polite questions like, "Do I have a job?" and "Why does everybody seem to be upset all the time here?" Mikey came out of the infirmary and swapped places with Leo. He went into this bedroom and I thought he was going to bed. But he came back with Mr. Bear under his arm. He sat next to Raph and said, "You gave me Mr. Bear, Raphie. Do you remember?"

Shook his head no.

"You found him and wanted him for yourself. And I had a bad dream and you said I could have him. Here, you can have him back if you want."

Raph took it gently and sat Mr. Bear on his lap. He patted the bear on the head a few times and then clapped its hands together. "He's dirty."

It's just an epic battle of adorableness around here today.

Then Raph asked Mikey, "Why do I have so many scars? Was I in an accident?"

Mikey flinched and didn't answer him. He looked around at Splinter who said, "You are a warrior."

"Do I kill people?" He said it with such sweetness. I'm still replaying that over and over in my head.

"You have in the past. You protected your family," Splinter said firmly.

Raph looked down at Mr. Bear and patted him on the head again.

Dear Diary,

Mikey pulled me into the infirmary with some bizarre science news. He said, "You know how Don told us that the thing they gave Raph when they made him crazy the first time was some kind of stimulant?"

"Yeah." It was the only solid lead we had and I was sure that with our luck he was about to tell me it was useless for some reason.

Mikey pulled out the lab report and said, "Well, looks like he was way dumbing it down for us. It has, like, fifty plus components. I don't know what any of them are. I'm sure he knows. Donny, wake up and tell us how to fix you."

Going to bed now.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 2.

I guess me, Leo and Mikey decided that it would help things if we all stood in the living room and screamed at each other for over an hour.

Mikey said, "THIS WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T CHATTED UP THE BAD GUY! VERY PROACTIVE, FEARLESS!"

Mikey never calls him Fearless and doesn't yell much. I think he's compensating for Raph. Raph's been very well behaved and trying to help. He was sitting in the infirmary with Don through the whole argument, patting his arm and saying, "I'm sorry that you're sick," and stuff like that. I heard him say once, "These people yell a lot. I bet it's scaring you." How's that for irony?

Leo was trying to clean up. It was all Mikey's mess this time. Leo said to Mikey, "You make it sound like I was going to ask him out on a date. I was trying to make him see the error of his ways. I have a responsibility…"

"BECAUSE YOU'RE A SUPERHERO AND WE'RE JUST YOUR STOOGES WHO STAND AROUND THE IN BACKGROUND!"

Leo threw a pillow shaped like a pink crab onto floor and looked unintentionally silly. He yelled, "WELL, IS THAT MY FAULT? WHAT NINJAS PICK UP STRANGE STUFF AND DRINK IT WHILE THEY'RE ON A MISSION! NOT TO MENTION WHILE THEY'RE IN A STRANGE LAB!"

I couldn't abide that. "Hey, don't bring them into this. They aren't able to defend themselves against accusations right now."

So we went back and forth about not really much of anything. I felt like one of the Danaids, filling that sieve for eternity. Just doing the same futile things over and over and never getting anywhere.

After an hour the argument was going, "YOU GUYS ARE SO IRRESPONSIBLE! YOU NEVER DRINK ANYTHING IN A STRANGE LAB! WHY DIDN'T YOU STOP THEM?"

"I WAS BUSY LISTENING TO YOU PROSELYTISING THE BAD GUY!"

"DON'T BRING DON AND RAPH INTO THIS! IT DOESN'T MATTER ANYWAY!"

Leo took a few deep breaths and finally said, "This isn't helping anything. Now here's what we're going to do…" He thought for a long time and said, "We'll go back to the lab, stand around and let the doctor distract us and then get captured and killed. How does that sound?" He rubbed his eyes and then went to his room.

Mikey went back into the lab and Raph came out into the living room, looking around like a sad puppy. He looked at me and said, "Pretty girl, why is the boss so mad all the time?" He can't remember our names for more than five minutes.

"Oh, he doesn't know what to do." I collapsed into a chair and decided to play Farmville and try to melt my brain for a while.

I could hear Raph go into Leo's room and decided that spying on them and eavesdropping would be more interesting. I positioned myself so that I could see in the bedroom. Leo was sitting on his bed, slumped over. Raph sat next to him and said, "You shouldn't cry."

"I know."

I was distracted by some vaguely frustrated sounds from Mikey and Splinter's voice shushing him.

"Was I a killer?" Raph asked Leo. That drew my attention back to them.

Leo said, "You were a protector."

Raph thought about it for a minute. "Who protects you? You look like you could use protecting."

Leo didn't answer him. I don't think he knows.

Raph did the sweetest thing. He reached out and dried Leo's face with his fingers. I think he won the cuteness contest right there. Then he said, "Well, I'll take care of you if nobody else will. I feel so useless. The sick one doesn't seem to know that I'm there. You should lay down and sleep for a while."

Leo sounded like he was gagging. But he reluctantly bedded down. Raph sat next to him on the floor and half hummed, half sang "I Walk the Line" as he read a comic book. I can't believe it. He can remember all the words to that song, but he can't remember any of our names.

I still can't believe he convinced Leo to sleep in the daytime.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo only slept for an hour or so and now he's in the dojo with Raph. He wants to test his residual fighting ability. Leo said that he remembers everything he's learned, except Raph's unwilling to chance hurting him and so he keeps pulling back when he's about to land a hit.

Back in the lab, Mikey looks like he's a fugue state. I went in there and he was spinning around on Don's stool with a soda can balanced on his forehead and said, "Ever wonder how they first decided to use cat gut for violin strings? Some guy must have run out of string for his violin and then looked at his cat and gone, 'Hmm. I wonder what would happen if…'"

I could have sworn that Splinter was smirking.

Mikey sat up and let the can fall on the floor and said suddenly, "I'm going to kill this guy."

"Michelangelo," Splinter said. "Do not worry about vengeance. We must concentrate on making them well. Vengeance is the last. Not the first."

His face didn't change at all after that statement and I don't think he took it to heart at all.

I took up a shift watching Don. He's still curled up, but his muscles aren't all tensed anymore. I don't think he has the strength for it now. His pillow is absolutely drenched. The tears haven't stopped since he got home. I haven't gotten any work done because I can't restrain myself from holding on to him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 3.

Oh, joy of joys. Don's coming out of it. He whispered something to me, but I can't make out what he said.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don closed his eyes for real and fell asleep. Not balled up any more.

Raph is still just as clueless as yesterday.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don came out of it by the end of the night and I was too busy with him to write anything. He said that he felt like something horrible was going to happen to him at any second and he couldn't find a way to tell us. He won't say anything else about it. He said that he remembered seeing the word "Lethe" printed on the bottle that Raph drank from.

Leo looks like he's chewing his tongue. He's ready to give Don a tongue lashing as soon as he's recovered enough to bear it.

Raph's sitting on the bed next to Don, who's holding onto his arm. Don's been very good with him so far. He just realized that Raph's an amnesiac and he hasn't shown any annoyance or expectation for him to remember anything. If only we'd had him back sooner.

Recap of what was just said…

"Why's Raph still the same?" Leo asked, more out of vague frustration and guilt than expecting an answer, I suppose.

Nobody listened to him. Mikey said, "Here's 'Lethe.' Great. Means forgetting. How helpful. Wait. Didn't all the bottles have different stuff written on them?"

Don thought and said, "I think so. Well, no. There was more than one Lethe bottle and I remember picking one up and picking up another one. It said… Coccyx or something."

"A coccyx is a human tailbone, Don," Mikey said as he Googled the word anyway.

"Yeah, I know." He bristled up, offended that Mike thought he was ignorant of the fact.

Leo couldn't hold back any longer. "Why did you drink that stuff? You know that's the stupidest thing you could have done!"

"Yeah, I know," Don said. Raph was momentarily frightened by the outburst and shot a doe-eyed expression at him. Don patted him and said, "It's fine, Raphie. I don't know. It was like I had this irresistible urge for water all of a sudden."

"Yeah, me too," Mikey said, scrolling through Wikipedia entries. "It was like when you have a craving for something. I was about to take one too until you I heard you screaming."

"You are their leader," Master Splinter said, breaking up the debate. "You should have been mindful of their whereabouts."

"Yes, Sensei." Leo hung his head.

"Hey, hold the phone," Mikey said. "Lethe is a body of water in Hades. Huh. You learn something new every day… Wait a sec… There's a river called Cocytus. Holy crap. Guess what that means?"

"Tailbone?" I said.

"Lamentation or the River of Wailing. And Lethe is called the Water of Forgetting. There's Mnemosyne. The Water of Memory."

Don wasn't terribly impressed. In fact, he went, "Psssht."

"There's the River Styx. The River of Hate. Sounds like a good candidate for that aggression stuff Raph had last time."

I know Mikey's always interested in this literary symbolism crap, but Don and myself didn't see it as being helpful. I said, "And when we see the doctor we can congratulate him on giving his drugs such ingenious names."

"You guys should read more," Mikey said, pointing wildly at the screen. "Don't you guys get it? There's an antidote for Raph. This Mnemosyne stuff will put him right."

"Sounds rather tenuous and logical for a mad scientist," Don said. I know he was really thinking that if it were him he wouldn't have made an antidote.

Well, at least we have something. And we have Don again. That's more than something.

But Raph is still a blank page and it's really getting to Leo. I don't think he realized how much he depends on that big angry raging bull of a brother.

So now the priority is to figure out what this stuff is. There's going to be another mission to the evil lab, but we're just going to swipe some water for testing. And see if there's any antidote lying around. Can't hurt.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph fixed a lovely breakfast while we were asleep. Surprisingly, Mikey was furious. He said, "All these years pretending you couldn't cook and making me do everything! You're a charlatan!"

Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. Yesterday Raph saw a granddaddy longlegs and didn't flip out at all. It would be interesting if it weren't so sad at the same time. Don wants to do experiments on him, but Splinter has forbidden it. Don won't really talk about what happened to him over the last few days. He'll probably open up about it later after he's had some time to adjust.


	45. Chapter 45

_Because I can't leave them suffering like this too much longer. I'm not a psychology major anything, so don't shoot me if I'm not right. Someone suggested to me that Raph sing "Take Me Home Tonight" by Eddie Money and I've been waiting to drop it somewhere. I don't know why I view Leo as a studied flirt. I guess he needs to blow off steam somehow and he seems the most suave to me._

Dear Diary,

Raph still doesn't know who he is. I don't know how much more of this Leo can take. Mikey just said that we should leave Raph this way. Like he's a new and improved Raph. I told him to shut his mouth.

Last night I was woken up by a loud scream. Raph had had a nightmare and was sitting up in bed, crying loudly. Not his Raph-like roar-sob. Like a normal kind of crying. I didn't want to go in the bedroom because I knew that Leo was sleeping in Mikey's bed and I didn't want to see Raph. It's just too disturbing.

Splinter was in the room in an instant. I wonder if he was really asleep.

Then I heard, "Pretty girl? Where is she?"

"April," Splinter called out to me.

So I had to go and see him. Leo was holding on to him, but Raph reached out for me when he saw me. I can't believe how pathetic it was. So I did the girl thing and held him for a while as he calmed down. He was covered in sweat.

By then Don and Mikey were watching in the doorway. Mikey was still half asleep and I don't think he really knew what was going on. Don looked curious, like it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. He asked, "What were you dreaming?"

Raph choked out, "I don't remember," and shifted away from him.

"Could you describe it?" Don asked. "It might make you feel better."

I whispered something encouraging. Can't remember what. He sat up a little and said, "Something was hiding in the closet and it was after me. I think. I don't remember too well."

I wanted to get away from him after a while because I could tell that Leo was chomping at the bit to comfort him, but Raph's still huge even when he's afraid of something in his closet and was nearly squeezing the air out of me.

"I think big brother will take care of you now," I said.

So he reluctantly released me and traded for Leo, who actually seemed glad for the chance to hold him. I bet he hasn't done that since they were four years old. When I left the room, Raph was hiccupping slightly and Leo was rocking him a little and telling him he was okay.

Don pulled me and Splinter aside as Mikey wandered back into his bed. Don said, "Isn't that interesting?"

"Interesting is not quite the word I would have used," Master Splinter said, his face full of worry.

I had to admit that it was at least interesting, if not much more. "Yeah, I don't think I've ever had to physically comfort him before."

"No, that's not… well, yeah, that's different, I guess. But he just had a childhood night terror. Like a five year old. What do you think about that? It's so interesting from a developmental standpoint. He doesn't have real fears left, so he's reverted back to early childhood. Like something predatory out to get him."

My geekiness awoke and I said, "Like his brain is reprocessing instinctual fears that he learned to cope with in early childhood. You're right. That is really cool."

But then I looked back in the bedroom and saw him curled up in Leo's arms and it lost its coolness.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Went to check on Raph and Leo earlier and Leo was sitting on Mike's bed, watching Raph sleep. I sat next to him and he said halfheartedly, "I'd flirt with you, but I don't have the strength right now."

"Forgiven," I said. "Man, he looks like such an angel."

We watched him sleep for a while. Leo said, "Not a worry. Isn't worried about what we think of him or if the outside world is safe or if we're safe from our enemies. Must be nice."

I had to ask and felt like I was suggesting something really evil, so I sort of maneuvered myself under his arm first and then said, "Do you think we're doing right by him? Trying to put him back to normal?"

"He wouldn't want this," Leo said right away without thinking. Put me to shame. "He doesn't want this. He must be in there somewhere." As I was leaving the room he said, "I'm hurt that you don't want to spend the night here in bed with me."

"Been saving that one?" I asked. I know he thinks of flirtatious lines and writes them down someplace. I tried to think of a comeback on the fly. "I already have been in bed with you and I wasn't impressed."

"Ah, good one," he said, almost laughing, but not quite. "I was going to comment on how you're not wearing a bra, but it didn't seem gentlemanly." I could tell he was watching me out of the corner of his eye for a reaction.

"You're an awful boy."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Showed Raph some old movies of himself. Mikey insisted on watching the one where he snuck up on him in the shower while he was singing Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" and then on the girl's part in the chorus, Mikey pulled the shower curtain back and Raph automatically punched him in the face and the camera landed on the floor.

Raph laughed but didn't seem to recognize anything. "I can sing?" he asked.

I couldn't stand watching him cluelessly watching old videos of himself. Watching the new Raph watching the old Raph that we all desperately wanted back was too hard. Splinter couldn't do it and excused himself.

We watched another video of Raph trying to use Mikey's nunchucks and doing a really poor job. Leo was giggling in the background. One of the 'chucks flew out of his hands and shattered something off screen. I could hear Don's howling laughter. Raph looked worriedly at the camera operator and said, "Let's erase that, shall we?"

"Was I clumsy?" Raph asked. I jumped. It was so surreal. I'd almost forgotten that he wasn't whole anymore. Feels like he's an empty shell that used to be Raph.

Don wanted to see the next clip. He had handcuffed Raph to a table, timing him to see how long it would take for him to escape them. As soon as Don hit the stopwatch, Raph ripped the dowel off the table and was free right away. Raphael "Destruction" Hamato.

I got to pick one. It was the time that he challenged me to Dance, Dance Revolution and he kept getting a 1% accuracy rating. Mikey said he looked like he was doing some kind of attack through dance. He was stomping on the mat with all of his weight and lunging forward with every step. I beat him and then he chased me out of the room. Then Mikey danced against him and got an 87% accuracy rating and Raph tried to pick him up and throw him over his shoulder, but Mikey plowed him into a side table and shattered my lamp.

The last video we watched was Leo's pick. I was worried at first because normally we would say that this was the Raph that we'd all rather forget. It started with somebody holding the camera unsteadily, waving it around and then Mikey's voice really close, like he was holding the camera saying, "What's this light mean?"

Don's voice saying, "Um… I think the battery's low. I'll look for the spare."

The camera spun around to look at me. I was sitting at the living room computer. "And here is April O'Neil," Mikey said. "International supermodel and den mother to the turtle boys. Have any words on your upcoming Playboy spread?"

I batted my eyes at him dramatically and said, "Yeah, I'm going to collaborate with Kanye West and we're going to be doing a bunch of hidden satanic symbolism."

"Sounds hot," Mikey said.

Then the camera whipped around because there was a loud shout from Leo. I had to close my eyes because Mikey was running with the camera and the shaking was making me dizzy.

Leo and Raph were standing at opposite ends of the dojo. Raph screamed, "SAY THAT AGAIN AND I'LL KILL YOU AND YOU KNOW I MEAN IT!"

"YOU'LL KILL ME! LIKE YOU HAVE ALL THOSE OTHER TIMES YOU'VE SAID THAT! YOU DON'T HAVE THE BALLS TO DO IT!"

"Guys?" Don asked vaguely. "I don't think you should kill each other. That's bad."

"Yeah, I don't want to clean up the blood," Mikey said from behind the camera.

Raph rushed at Leo across the dojo and they pummeled each other for a while. I watched Raph on the couch as he watched himself on the TV, attacking his own brother like a rabid dog. "Did I hurt you?" he asked Leo.

He was answered when the figures on the television broke apart. Leo was clutching his stomach and Raph was holding his sai out in front of him. Mikey dropped the camera and it lay on its side as we all rushed to Leo to see what had happened.

"I didn't mean that," Raph said lamely, backing away.

"You just stabbed him!" Don said, putting pressure on it. "Thankfully, it wasn't deep or anything. What's wrong with you?"

But Raph wasn't in the frame anymore because he'd taken off.

Leo was limping away going, "I'm fine. No, really. He didn't mean it. It was an accident."

Raph looked at Leo and said, "I'm sorry. I was a bad brother, wasn't I?"

He didn't answer. I have a weird feeling that he misses that the most.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Tonight Splinter held a meeting about breaking into that building. I'm being included this time because they need all the help they can get. This is a lab so they want me, the lab rat, to sneak in. Not sure how. I guess they're thinking that I'll know how to look and act.

Plan's confusing.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Spent some time with Don in the lab going over the building schematics and rendezvous points and signals and such. His plan is to look for the bottled water and snatch some samples. He wants to know what these things really are so that we can figure out how to cure Raph. That's the top priority. Stopping his plans, getting vengeance is secondary.

"…so hopefully we'll extract you by 1400 hours," he said, writing on the schematics that were spread out on the center island. We know it's serious when he goes into military jargon. "What time is that?"

"What was it like when you… you know…" I pointed at the infirmary bed.

He fiddled with the schematics. "1400 hours is 2pm."

I wasn't going to let it go and didn't let him change the subject.

He said, without looking at me, "It was kind of like that feeling when you wake up from a nightmare and you hold your breath and look around the room because… it's like fear is all around you… I could see you all and knew you were there… but it didn't give me any comfort. I was… closed up in this feeling like… you'd all left me behind. You were all gone or moved on or dead or all of it. I don't know. It sounds like nonsense now."

I didn't know what to say to him. "I'm sorry you went through that."

"Do you have any white lab coats left from when you worked for Stockman," he said over my compassionate statement.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Good. Good. You should go home and get them."

I turned to leave the lab and he said, "Thanks for staying with me. I do remember…"

"You want a hug, don't you?" I said. He likes hugging, but he's too shy to ask.

So we had our schmaltzy hug and Mikey looked in and then pantomimed playing a violin.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Searching for white lab coats. Where are they? Lost when I need them. I wonder if this plan of his will actually work. It had better.


	46. Chapter 46

_I don't remember if Odysseus killed Circe or what, but let's pretend that somebody did for the sake of the story. If any of the literary references are confusing then you can ask me or else look them up on Wikipedia. This was a rather labor intensive chapter. I hope it is satisfying._

Dear Diary,

Prepping for our mission. Raph's mildly curious, but not enough to ask what we're doing. Mikey's staying home to look after Raph. He doesn't really need much looking after, but better safe than sorry.

Don, Leo and I are going to infiltrate the lab of evil. It's called Circe Industries. Never heard of it before and big surprise; we can't find anything on it. No permits, licenses, news reports, zoning, contracts. Nothing.

Mikey said he's going to buy me a Halloween costume. I said I don't care. Don't like Halloween and nobody will see me in it anyway. It's nearly October. Didn't even notice.

Said goodbye to Raph. He accepts hugs and kisses easily, but I don't think he gets anything out of them.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I'll skip all the "Die Hard" getting into the building stuff. It's just a converted warehouse out by the docks.

Well, the inside looks like a really ratty science lab. It's all from the sixties and really worn out. Looks like a hospital in a third world country. But Don had given me a blue tooth to wear, thinking it wouldn't look suspicious for a girl to walk around on the phone. They were following me, doing the ninja thing. So I didn't see them. But I knew they were watching and they could also hear me.

"What exactly am I looking for?" I remember asking into the blue tooth.

Don said, "I don't remember. We chased him in there. Do you remember, Leo?" Mumbling as Leo answered. I waited about a full minute for a response. Don said, "Leo says he doesn't remember. But I know where it is. It's in this hallway."

I asked why they sent me this far ahead if they were back there in the hallway.

"Oh, no. I meant that you were in the hallway. Sorry. It should be on your left. You'll have to poke around. Remember to take one sample of as many labeled bottles as you can."

I was carrying a duffle bag and I reminded him that it was my only real task in the operation and I'd have to be an idiot to forget.

"Okay, this might be it," he said. I knew he heard me, but he usually ignores argumentative speech. Which is a good thing because he's especially cruel otherwise.

So I went into the room and found that it was a store room. Not exactly what they had described. They'd made it sound like there were computers and work stations in the room they had found.

"Doesn't matter. Are those the water bottles in question?"

I had a driving urge to drink one of them and guessed that it was. I picked one up to check the label and then I was conked on the head. I didn't realize it at the time. At the time I thought, "Oh, that hurts." And then I blacked out.

It was one of those situations where you don't realize that something really bad happened until it's over. I was in a really uncomfortable position and I kept thinking I would fall over, but I wasn't really sure what position I was in. If that makes any sense. I heard a voice talking to me, but I couldn't focus enough to understand what it was saying.

To put an agonizing experience into one sentence, I had been knocked out and tied to a chair in a room that I didn't recognize. Where were the guys? They hadn't been too far behind me. I instantly thought that they were dead and I guess I panicked because I heard the voice say, "Don't worry. I won't hurt you."

I wanted to say that I wasn't thinking about me because I didn't want the stranger to think I was that selfish, but I held my tongue.

It was a guy in a white lab coat. He squatted in front of me so that I could see him at eye level and said, "I'm not going beat around the bush. I know that you are close to those turtle monsters and I need one of them. Only one. Not all four of them."

"I don't know…"

"Before you bother lying to me," he said. He pulled out my wallet and there was a picture of Don making a face. "Charming."

"Well, what makes you think I would give any of them up to you? And why don't you have one already? They've been in here a bunch of times and some of them were incapacitated, I believe. Makes you look pretty incompetent."

"I've had a hard time locating them. I don't have a force of goons. Or didn't until now, anyway. Thanks to Styx."

Didn't make sense for a minute. Styx. River of Hate. I remembered Raph's psychotic rampage. "You've given that stuff to people?"

"You're sharp. Yes, I have. I had to test it, didn't I? I can't sell a faulty product. Normally, you know, I would think that it's a bad idea for the villain to give up all his carefully laid plans to a hostage in case they're rescued, but I'm not the villain here. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm just a guy who got lucky."

"Lucky? How?" I don't know why I kept talking to him. I guess it was better than letting him beat me to death. Plus, sitting by myself waiting to get rescued is boring.

"I met a woman."

"Mazel tov."

"But not any woman. It was Circe."

"Weird name."

"THE Circe. See, I was in Tartarus for… well… I don't want to brag about past accomplishments, but while I was there I met Circe and she still happened to have the spells to get a person out of Hades. Guess what the trick is?"

"A catchy tune and jaunty dance?" I don't know if I was really that witty after having been whacked upside the head. I was probably just thinking it and groaning out loud.

"Live meat. Cerberus only eats live meat and that is how the dead don't leave and the living stay out. And I waited. I waited for the day that some living schmuck would find a way past Cerberus and into the land of the dead. She had advised me to bring samples of the water back with me. It would make me powerful. So I led the poor soul to the gates of Hades and exchanged him for myself…"

"You fed him to Cerberus, you mean." I wanted to be clear on the point.

"Well, yes. And then made my way to Charon and bargained with him as well. And now I am in the land of the living, but not living myself. For I am still amongst dead. It's bitchin'! And I'm going to make so much money when I sell this stuff. North Korea put in a huge bid for the Cocytus. Now I'll be able to afford that room in Trump Towers like I wanted in life."

So he babbled like that for a while and I wrote him off as a nut job. He pulled out a big ancient book and opened it. A few pages cracked and fell out and he said, "Oh, I hope those weren't important. I need to go back to Circe again. She has more ideas and I promised to free her and to bring her back into the world. We'll be an unstoppable team. Her and her witchcraft and me and my… what I've got."

He opened the book and said, "Now I'll need another fresh body and I don't have time to wait for your turtle friends. So I suppose I could just take you. I'd like to have two though. It's hard to get past Cerberus without a fresh body to distract it. I'm planning on using that Raphael creature. He seems particularly vulnerable right now."

"If you touch any of them…" I know it did a lot of good to threaten. The worst I could do was cuss at him.

"Well, we need a magic circle," he said as he read his book. "Wait. I'll wait until I have Raphael. Yeah, that'll be best." He shut the book. "So guess what? You're going to be a guest of Circe Industries. But don't worry. Your brother will be here soon and you can comfort him as Cerberus eats him. Or eats you. I haven't decided who I'll feed to it first." His watched beeped. He checked it and said, "Oh, I have a conference call with North Korea. They're punctual people. I know it's the middle of the night there but…"

Then he mercifully left and took his ranting with him. I sat there for a while wondering what it would feel like to get eaten by a three headed dog. Probably not good. Then convincing myself that the guy was just crazy. But that didn't fly either because obviously the water that the boys had been given/ taken had worked.

Then Leo was in the room. "Where've you two been?" I said. I guess I should have been more grateful to be rescued.

"We… ran into a little complication that needed attending. Don's attending to the complication now," Leo said said as he untied me. "You okay?"

I tried to jump up and strut away, but I just collapsed into his arms. Like a true damsel in distress. If it helps, I slapped him around a little bit and berated him.

"Hey, I was watching and listening the whole time. I didn't leave you alone," he said.

"What complication?" I asked as he escorted me down the hall. He was holding me because I was wobbling around.

I didn't need to ask. He took me into another room. There was Mikey and Raph.

"What are you guys doing here? Mikey, why is Raph here?"

Mikey had a steely-eyed look. I knew he was up to something. "Thought you could use the help. Actually, me and Raphie were lonely." His normal baby tone wasn't coming through like usual.

"Get him out of here! Raph and me together here equals trouble."

Raph looked hurt, like a sad puppy and said, "Don't you want me here?"

"Yes, sweetie. It's just that there's a bad guy around who wants to…" I couldn't look into his abnormally innocent face and say it. "Leo, Don. Could we have a private conference elsewhere?"

So I took them aside into another room. I was beginning to lose track of where I was. All the rooms looked the same. I told them what Mad Doctor Evil had just told me. Don laughed. Leo was convinced. He more likely to believe the impossible. "We should get you and Raph out of here. Don…"

"No way! I need to look for the water. I don't want this whole stupid thing to be for nothing."

"Donatello…" Dangerous leader voice.

"Yeah, whatever. Come on, April."

So we were on our way back to the other store room and then Leo stops and calls into the other room. "Get out here! We're under attack!"

"How do you know?" I asked. I guess it wasn't the most important thing at the moment.

"They're coming up the stairs," Don said. "Get behind me. Better yet. Get in the room and stay with Raph."

So Mikey and I swapped places. I watched Raph's face as he listened to the fighting outside. He didn't seem scared. A little surprised maybe.

The fighting grew more distant and as soon as I had a bad feeling about it, then the Mad Doctor Evil came in the room. "So, you're Raphael," he said, looking him up and down.

"That's what they tell me," Raph said.

"You stay away from us!" I couldn't do anything more than stand in front of Raph and silently curse Leo for letting the fight take them away from the door. I don't know what got into me. I felt like one of those lionesses that you see on National Geographic protecting their cubs. So I looked around for something to hit this guy with and only then did I notice that we were surrounded by labeled boxes. Labels like "Cocytus," "Lethe," and "Mnemosyne." So I grabbed a Mnemosyne and I don't know how the doctor didn't stop me in time because I had to unscrew the cap. Then I jabbed the bottle in Raph's mouth and told him to drink it down. Of course he drank it without question. The Mad Doctor Evil bolted from the room. I think he knows Raph's reputation and what was coming next.

I waited for something to happen. I expected it to be dramatic like in the movies and that he would cough and sputter or faint. But his expression changed slowly from that docile contentedness that I had grown used to and into… I don't know how to put it. Like a growing pain. Like somebody realizing that they'd been shot? I don't know. I had a really brief thought that I'd done the wrong thing. Then he turned and ran out the door. I followed him, thinking he was running away because he was afraid.

Boy, did I misjudge that. He went straight to the fight and cut through about five guys like tissue paper. Like a freight train. Leo screamed at him, "These people are drugged! Stop, Raph!" Didn't even act like it was a surprise that he was back to normal.

But Raph either didn't hear him or didn't listen. He cut down a bunch of people without much regard for their future well being. I was so shocked at his sudden recovery that I stood there and let myself get jumped from behind. Raph knocked the guy out with the blunt end of a sai.

I don't remember what happened. They fought and I was afraid and hid behind some boxes. Really catchy fight description, I know. These guys just kept coming from everywhere. Then I realized that they were just bouncing back up after they were knocked out. Except the ones that Raph had killed. Then I heard Leo yelling, "MIKEY, STOP!"

I looked around the boxes that I was cowering behind and saw Mikey grab the doctor by the head and twist. There was sickeningly loud snap and the doctor dropped to the ground. Leo struggled over the fight debris (unconscious/ dead people, broken stuff, weapons, blood). "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?"

Mikey said, "I made a promise." He didn't look at all like the bratty baby right there.

"That's the good thing about being dead already," said the Mad Doctor Evil's body as his neck retwisted back into place. "Can't be killed."

But it wasn't for trying. Raph jumped on him and beat him so hard that if the guy were able to die, he would have been killed ten times. And we just stood there and let him do it. It seemed like we owed it to him and it was better than having him savagely beat people who really could die. Eventually, Don brought over a cord and told Raph to bind Mad Doctor Evil's hands and feet. So they tied him up and he just lay there laughing at us. "Can't get rid of me, boys. Sorry."

I saw the book lying on the floor and paged through. "Thanks for marking the page for me," I said. He'd marked the Passage into Hades page. "We need to make a magic circle. Any ideas?"

The Mad Doctor Evil wasn't laughing now. "You can't send me back! Not like this! Without live offerings for Cerberus and a coin for Charon…"

Leo pulled a quarter out of his pocket and threw it on the floor in front of Mad Doctor Evil's face. "Go tell somebody who cares."

We made a magic circle out of sand that Mikey found in the room that I was being held hostage in. He had a bundle of magic stuff that was needed for the ceremony or whatever it was. So we laid out all the creepy stuff according to the pages in the book, which were conveniently in English somehow and Don said the incantation.

The Mad Doctor Evil said, as Don read the spell, "You will regret this. Circe is more powerful than all of us and she will not be happy that you have cheated her out of her time on earth. She will walk again. She will…" Then a portal opened in the floor and we all had to back away so that we didn't get sucked into Hades.

I hope Cerberus eats him. But I know better.

"Too bad you gave him the coin," Raph said to Leo. "I would have really loved to know that he was standing on the shore for 100 years. Yes, I read sometimes."

Then we had our emotional release. Hadn't had time with all the portals opening and spell casting. "Bout time you showed up," Leo said. They had one of those manly back thumping hugs.

I didn't feel comfortable flying at him. I expected Mikey to do that, but he was looking uncommonly sober. "I'm sorry I failed you, Raph," he said. "I promised I would kill him and I couldn't. He was all invincible and stuff." That sounded a little more like him.

"Maybe it wasn't meant to be," Don said. He looked like a hug was coming on.

Raph recognized it and waved him over. "Cherish it 'cause you're not getting another one for ten years."

I don't know why I couldn't take my hug like everybody else. He doesn't freely give them out. He's usually more likely to knock you out instead. But I had an uneasy feeling like everything wasn't right yet. That he was doing this for our sake and I didn't want to burden him with my relief. And that makes absolutely no sense.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I cannot even explain Splinter's relief when we all got home. He took Raph in the dojo and had a private talk with him for a long time. When they came back Mikey said, "Let's all sleep on the hide-a-bed!"

"Will we fit?" Don asked. He'd fled to the sanctuary of the computer as soon as we'd gotten in the door.

"Yeah, let's try it," Leo said.

Raph didn't answer. He was in the dojo ravaging the punching bag.

And yes, all five of us fit on the hide-a-bed with absolutely no room to spare between us.

"Ugh. Togetherness," Raph said. Everybody wanted to sleep by him, but Leo and Mikey won out.

We watched a stupid movie and then fell asleep one by one. I woke up after awhile and heard Leo's voice whispering, "You can say it, if it's true. Or if it's not true. I don't judge."

"Yeah, you do." Raph's voice. Both of them were so quiet that I could barely here them. "Okay, yeah. I was happier. But I didn't worry about anything because I didn't care about anything."

Pause. Leo's voice. "Remember when we were really small and you used to be afraid all the time? You would have those bad dreams and no matter how scared you were, you would never let me hold you."

"Yeah, please remind me of that," Raph said, his voice a little louder and more assertive.

"You'd hold my wrist. It was kind of annoying, actually."

Raph laughed a little. "You wouldn't let me hold your hand."

Mikey said, "You held my hand. Double standard, much?"

"Great. Now you woke him up."

"Me?" Leo whispered. "You're the one moving around."

"Raphie, did you miss us?" Mike obviously. I've never heard Leo call him Raphie.

"Not really."

"Well, we missed you."

Raph said, "Shut the fuck up, you whiny little pussy."

Movement like somebody rolled over and then it was quiet. Raph. Avoidant and foul mouthed. It was good to have him back.


	47. Chapter 47

_A brief wrap up before jumping into the next thing. I've actually prewritten a chapter and I'll probably prewrite another today._

Dear Diary,

Raph asked me to keep this in a safe place for him. He told me not to read it unless he died, so guess what I did as soon as he left?

* * *

Everybody:

If you're reading this then I'm either dead or April read this as soon as I left the room. You're a sneak. That's why we keep you around.

I know I'm bad at talking about stuff and I'm worse at writing so don't judge me here I'm just trying to say what I want said after I'm gone. And we all know that it isn't too far off so

I don't know what you should do with my body. Don't seem like burying is an option unless you guys somehow find a way to trick a coroner. Maybe you could do it someplace else. But what if they dug it up when they fixed an underground phone line? Never mind. Just stuff and mount me, Don. If you need to spread my ashes for some reason don't do it in the lair because you never know. I might haunt you all for eternity.

It's come to my attention that there might be a reason that I can't tell you what I think before I go. I've always thought it didn't matter because I could say it while I was going you know but now I think that's a bad way to go.

So enough explaining. Here it is.

Damn. I have lots to say. Where did it go?

Okay.

Leo can have my stuff. I guess my sais. You can have those. And Mikey can have the stuff of his that I stole. It's out in the 3rd east tunnel. All the old Spiderman issues are in a box. And Don I still have the 'still parts. They're under my bed. Take em and use em for whatever. Splinter you can have whatever you want that's left. I don't have much to dole out here. I don't know what to give April. I can't see what you would want of mine. I did get a big Japanese fan once and I was going to give it to you for your birthday but I lost it and I didn't find it until a month after and now its in the closet so why don't I just hold on to that and you can take it when I'm gone.

I know I don't give you guys much reason to keep me around and you do for some reason so thanks. I was just thinking today about how I didn't remember anybody and was kind of like eh normal and okay and happy but then when I remembered and saw that I didn't remember anybody then

Looking back I missed all of you. Making me a little crazy right now. Like that's any different than normal

Anyway, thanks for reading this.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I know that was somewhat inarticulate, badly punctuated and terse, but it made me cry for at least an hour. I might as well have read a tragic epic poem. I hid it away so that the others won't find it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We're driving Raph nuts, following him around and staring at him. He keeps yelling, "WHAT ARE YOU ALL DOING? STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND! LEO, GET OUT OF THE BATHROOM! CAN'T I USE THE JOHN IN PEACE? WHY DIDN'T ANYBODY EAT THE HORSERADISH WHILE I WAS OUT OF IT? NOW IT'S ALL BAD! YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THAT COSTS? MAYBE I SHOULD LET YOU PEOPLE STARVE!"

So things are a little more back to normal. Leo keeps looking at me and sighing happily, like listening to Raph scream at him is the greatest thing that can happen to him in the course of a day. Don and Mikey are mumbling a little that at least the no-memory-Raph didn't yell so much. But they're still happy to have him back. Splinter isn't fluttering over him like everybody else. Just acting like it's all good.


	48. Chapter 48

_The only nightclub I've been too was so loud that it was impossible to talk, but let's say for story purposes that they somehow can hear in this place. I don't know why they don't have Burger King crowns anymore. Probably caught on that only adults wore them. I've recently been inspired by a "Why's Raph the sexy one" thread at Stealthy Stories. So blame them. Plus, I like sexy Leo. But don't worry. They won't get terribly sexy in my stories. Don't ask me why all of them know the lyrics to "Hash Pipe" by Weezer. I happened to be listening to it at the time. My knowledge sometimes leeches off onto them sometimes._

Dear Diary,

I'm going to murder Mikey.

I'm dressed like Britney Spears.

I now realize that Leo and Raph are at their most dangerous when they get along.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I should probably relate what happened after that kind of suspense. But who am I kidding? I'm the only one who'll ever see this. My suspense goes to waste. I recovered from the initial ten minutes of shock and then I was actually psyched. I had all four of them over here preparing for their annual Halloween Pretend to Be Normal Night. I convinced them all to go clubbing with me.

They dressed me up like this skanky 16 year old school girl. I'm wearing a plaid mini skirt and cropped white dress shirt and white knee high socks. I think I look pretty hot. Don said that they'll be beating pedophiles off me all night long. I'm beginning to wonder about Mikey's motivation in buy this. I asked and it turned out it was a group effort to see if I would actually dress up like Britney Spears or not. I think they were taking bets, but I'm not sure.

I was putting on makeup and they were all evaluating me like I was their doll.

"You should put on really pink glittery stuff." Mikey was rifling through my makeup and opening them up and smelling them and rubbing them on his hands.

"Hey, do you have any Sanrio stuff?" Leo asked. "Or Mary Janes or anything like that?"

"I'm starting to wonder if you're a pedophile," I said.

I'd noticed that they were all getting testosterone fueled. They were rough housing more than usual and everything that Raph and Leo said was phallic. I think it was the anticipation of the evening.

I stepped out of the bathroom to model the outfit for them and did a silly kind of music video pose.

Mikey pretended to collapse from shock and lay on the floor, gasping.

Raph said, "Oh, daddy like."

"Since when did you all turn into a bunch of green perverts?"

Don looked me over and said, "You're going to get cold."

I reassured him that I would be fine. You know, the annual denial that you'll be warm because you want to show off your costume and don't want to cover it up with a coat.

So we got out on the street and were all walking along like normal people down the sidewalk. Strange. It's strange to do normal things with them.

Don suggested that we take the bus. So we found a bus stop and then they all realized that they had no idea where or when the busses go. Luckily, I knew that this was the wrong route and we moved on to the correct bus stop. We were headed to that Rainbow Club that I go to with Susan. I was getting a lot of cat calls and every time we heard one, Raph would give them this look of impending homicide.

"Yeah, she's hot and she's ours!" Mikey yelled at one of them. He was so excited that he was vibrating. And just from walking down the street. I was getting nervous about taking him to the club. Maybe he would explode.

The bus came and I had to pay for all four of them. Of course. We all sat down close to each other and Don looked like he was about flip out over the germ potential. Then Leo leaned over to me and whispered, "That bus driver was looking at your butt. Did you notice?"

I just shrugged. "If you didn't want guys checking me out then you should have dressed me like a nun."

Raph looked like he belonged on a city bus. I don't know why. Some guys on the street said hello to them and he just casually said hello back. Don asked him, "Do you know those guys?"

"No."

Mikey took the opportunity to run up and down the bus and jump on the seats. I had to duck as he jumped over me a bunch of times.

Kind of funny. They do such extraordinary things like fighting ninjas and traveling to parallel dimensions, but doing something so ordinary, like riding a city bus is a big adventure to them. Makes me feel like I have something cool to contribute in their lives.

So we got to the club and joined the line and then I had to listen to Leo fretting about whether or not they would get in and if anybody suspected they weren't wearing costumes. "You'll be fine. Shut up," Don said. "Think they sell ecstasy in there?"

"I don't know." I hadn't thought about it before.

Mikey was bouncing up and down and saying to a girl behind us, who was dressed like a cowgirl. "Yeah, I think I look cool too. I hope we get in here. I've been to a club once, but we were working and didn't get to do anything fun. Well, the bar was on fire for a while and that was kind of cool."

The girl asked him where he worked.

He said, "I work with my brothers…"

Raph reached around and covered his mouth.

"Why'd you do that?" the girl asked.

He didn't answer, but he did keep his hand over Mikey's mouth.

"Well, that's rude," she said.

Her friend seemed to like rude guys and said, "Hey, I like your suit."

Raph uncovered Mikey's mouth and Mike's mouth was instantly moving as soon as it was free. He said, "Raph's mean. He doesn't like girls. Ouch! Raphie! Leo, Raph just kicked me!"

The girls giggled at Mikey. Leo sighed and said, "Raph, cut it out."

"So you're all brothers?" the first girl asked Leo.

Then I thought. Holy crap. These girls are my age and they're about to flirt with them. They weren't quite there yet, but they were building up to it. Don was standing behind me. He caught on quicker than I did.

Leo said, "Yes, we're brothers."

"Nice costumes," said the second girl. "So are the shells plastic? Are you wearing body paint?"

"Yes. Yes," Leo said. He wasn't listening at all and was inspecting the alleys, bouncer, suspicious patrons, etc…

After a while Raph whispered in Leo's ear and Leo got a big smile on his face and said, "Well, you're on."

"On what?" Don asked. He didn't look too thrilled. We were getting closer to the door and we could see inside when the door opened.

"None of your business," Raph snapped. "Big kid talk."

"I'm older than you," Don muttered. "I don't like this. It looks crowded."

"What'll I get if I win?" Leo said to Raph. He was eyeballing me as they conspired, so I could tell they were up to something nefarious. I was thinking, it's Leo. What trouble could he possibly get up to? Mr. Responsibility.

Raph thought for a second and said, "Do you still have $100?"

"Yeah. Sure. We can do that. Wait, how will I know they're genuine? I mean, are you going to make them yourself?"

Raph feigned shock. "Would I do that?"

"Yes."

"You're right. I would. But I won't in the spirit of good sportsmanship."

Leo laughed perversely.

Mikey was saying to the girl behind him, "I like to dance, but I like to meet new people too so I'm not sure if I'll dance or talk. That's cool that you're in nursing school. I bet you see lots of blood. Do you have to wear a little outfit like they do in old movies?"

We finally got past the bouncer and as soon as we got through the door, Mikey had ninja vanished and I didn't see him for hours. I still don't know what he got up to during that time of unaccountability. Same thing for all of them but Don, come to think of it.

"We're on the clock now," Raph said to Leo. "Let's say, three hours."

I know they're psychotically competitive and asked, "Will this contest get me thrown into jail?"

They didn't listen and both wandered off in separate directions, leaving me behind with Donny, who smiled at me awkwardly and shrugged. "What do we do now?"

"We dance," I said. I pulled him to the dance floor by the hand and he watched me and the other dancers for the first few songs. Took a while for him to get into it. But he did eventually and we danced until I was so tired that I had to tell him to stop. He looked surprised, like it was unreasonable that I'd be worn out after two hours.

We spotted Mikey going crazy on the other end of the dance floor and Don went to meet him. I headed towards the bar.

What I saw was pretty amazing. Raph was dirty dancing with this really… unchaste looking… blond and they were totally grinding on each other. I didn't know what to do, so I just pretended that I didn't see him. And there was Leo at the bar, talking to another girl. Looked classier than Raph's girl. He looked like he'd gone all James Bond charisma guy and kept touching the girl's arm when he spoke to her and then went so far as to tuck her hair behind her ear.

It was all beginning to make sense. This contest involved picking up women in some way.

Me, Don and Mike were ready to leave after a while and Don went to fetch Raph and Mikey fetched Leo. They both were with a different girl. Come to think of it, they were with different girls every time I saw them.

So we were walking down the sidewalk away from the club and Don shook his head like a wet dog and said, "I don't think I'll hear for a week. That was loud. I don't like loud stuff."

"What about stuff that blows up?" Mikey asked.

"Well, only loud stuff that involves a propellant or accelerant then."

Leo and Raph were whispering in conspiracy and Mikey said, "What are they up to? I don't like this. When they do that, then it means they're up to something really bad."

"You guys behave yourselves back there?" I asked.

"YES!" they both said together.

So that means no.

Don was skipping along and enjoying himself. He's happiest when he's doing something simple, like walking. "I like them better when they hate each other. Things are safer then."

Leo said, "So pony up. How many did you get?"

"Seven. But one was a guy."

Mikey ran a long way ahead and stood on a park bench, waiting for us.

"That shouldn't count," Leo said. "Prove it."

"Well…" Raph looked back at Don and me. "Not now, okay."

"Fine."

"And how did you do?"

Leo didn't say anything for a second and was fighting off a smile. He noticed that we were all listening and I think he was trying to keep from blowing his cover. "I stopped after a while. I got distracted."

"Did I win?" Raph asked. "What was that distracting? A Purple Dragon?"

Leo whispered into Raph's ear and Raph yelled, "YOU DID NOT!"

"I did too."

"THAT'S FUCKING AWESOME! YOU WIN! NO NEED TO COUNT! I HAND YOU THE CROWN!"

"Hey, what crown?" I was holding myself and shivering. "Let's go in somewhere. You guys hungry? Looks like Burger King is open." I pointed at the Burger King so that Mikey would know that we were stopping.

He ran back like a green cheetah. "I want a crown!" Mikey said, running inside ahead of us.

Raph threw a couple of dollar bills at Leo. They were both laughing hysterically. "There's your money! You earned it! I can't believe that!"

Leo shoved him playfully and said, "I'm feeling hurt by this doubt you have…"

Don said, "Let's all get toys!"

They were all being really loud. I had to shush them and demand what they wanted. Raph sat on the counter and kept leaning over the cash register and watching what the worker was doing. I think he made him nervous because he screwed up or order. Mikey was wearing his Burger King crown. He put one on my head. Thankfully, the place was empty. Leo was doing the penny drop and kept missing and Don kept supplying him with new pennies. Eventually he won and he yelled, "Free fries! I get something free!"

So we ordered our food and then I gasped because I noticed that one of my professors had just come in the door. "Leo!" I took him by the arm and tried to stand behind him. "That's my professor." Leo looked me over and tried not to laugh and kept snorting through his nose.

So of course, they all got conspicuously quiet as the word spread amongst them. I hoped that if I kept my back to him that he wouldn't figure out that it was me. Then he ordered his food and as he shuffled towards us to join the wait, he looked over and jerked as he recognized me. And there I was, standing there dressed like a naughty school girl and wearing a Burger King crown.

"Hello, April," he said. He was obviously looking me up and down. "Who are your friends?"

"My brothers," I said. I was trying hard not to laugh. They weren't doing a very good job.

He realized that they were all turtles and said, "Those are very good costumes."

"Thanks," Mikey said. "So's yours."

Snorting laughter from his brothers. My professor looked confused. He wasn't wearing a costume. I think freedom was making them all lose it. And as far as I knew, none of them had been drinking at all.

And then my professor left and I said that I was sure that my GPA had just dropped. Raph said that it probably went up a full letter grade.

Next we did what any daring teenagers do on a night on the town. We went to Wal-Mart. Can you believe it? They've never been inside a department store.

"Wow, it's just like on TV," Don said in mock awe as he got a shopping cart.

"Why are you getting a cart?" Leo said. "I don't want to carry a bunch of stuff home."

"Let me live the dream," he said.

Raph was bouncing up and down in place, waiting for us to all get inside the store. I said to Mikey, "You guys are acting like a bunch of nutcases. You should all be flattered that I'd be seen with you in public."

He made a gesture to my mini-skirt and as if to punctuate his point, some middle aged women walked past me, shaking their heads. So Mikey and I got some food for our dinner or breakfast or whatever time it was when we got back to my place. Mikey called Raph to find out where he was and we met him down in automotive with Don. They were playing with the car stereos and had "Hash Pipe" by Weezer blasting loudly.

Leo was looking at DVDs and bought a few seasons of "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" with his $100 winnings from Raph. He'd gotten a cart for some reason after we left him up front. I guess he couldn't resist the allure. So Don stole his cart and he and Mikey played chicken, crashing them into each other.

And I think the crowning moment of the night was when Leo and Mikey started sparring in the underwear department. Mikey had gone in there to fling thongs at us like sling shots. And then Leo jumped him and knocked over the thong display. Then were we formally told to leave the store.

They thought that was the coolest thing ever. They got thrown out of a Wal-Mart.

We were still being really loud on the bus back. I was standing up and there was an old lady sitting a few seats away. Don asked Raph, "What is that 'Hash Pipe' song about anyway?"

"Getting high, ain't it?"

Leo was holding a few bags of groceries on his lap and was inspecting one of his Buffy seasons. "I thought it was about a hooker."

"FUCK!" Raph yelled that and jumped out of his seat.

Leo said, "What?" kind of sharply.

"What happened? Did I scare you?" Raph was laughing at Leo's reaction, like he hadn't just screamed hysterically himself.

"No. I was surprised. What happened?"

Raph moved to another seat. "Thought I saw a spider."

The old lady turned around and said, "Excuse me, young man, but I find it very disrespectful of you to use that kind of language."

Raph was horrified. He stuttered out, "Sumimasen." They all laughed at him and then he said, "Sorry, ma'am."

We got off the bus and they were instantly all over Raph for getting yelled at by an old lady.

Mikey kept saying, "Sumimasen," every couple of minutes.

Don was singing the chorus to "Hash Pipe" really loudly, like a howl.

I asked them, "Did you guys all forget to take your anti-psychotics this morning?"

So ended the night. We made dinner, which was really breakfast because the sun came up as we ate it. Then we all fell asleep wherever we were sitting. Now that the night is over, I'm really dying to know what Leo did that so shocked Raph. Because to shock Raph…

* * *

Dear Diary,

Now I know. Please take it out of my brain.


	49. Chapter 49

_I remember a certain brother-in-law of mine trying to cut off my sister's pants with a machete when they teenagers. So the weirdest stuff is usually taken from life. I reminded her of this incident today and she gave me a really funny defense for her husband and it is now immortalized as Raph's self defense. I know I may get some OOC comments here, but honestly, I don't think that Leo's as much of an angel as we all portray him to be. And the man gets one day off a year, so we should cut him some slack. _

Dear Diary,

We've just woken up from our binge of craziness. Raph and Leo were brushing their teeth together and Raph said, "I bet you had some good dreams last night." That was rather misleading because it was 2pm.

"Shut up, man." Leo kicked him discreetly. "It wasn't that big a deal."

Then they kicked each other in the shins while they were brushing their teeth. I hope they didn't think they were being discreet anymore.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don's determined to find out what they were up to. I told him they were probably trying to get a girl to ask them out, but he thinks there's more to it. I posited the question, "Do we really want to know? I mean, if it's gotten Raph so excited then maybe we're better off not knowing."

Mikey was sitting in the lab reading Emily Dickinson. "Those two get up to evil stuff together a lot. Well, every year or so, anyway. And I'm tired of everybody making it out like I'm the one who's always getting into trouble. I want to see somebody else punished for once. So I'm all for it."

Don was doing something illegal on the computer. He said, "Your motives are truly moving, Mike."

"What are you doing?"

"Just hacking into the Rainbow Club security feed." He said it like he was checking the weather. "We should all be in there. Looks like a continuous tape recording. That's good. I hate it when it takes stills in intervals. Look, there we are."

And there we were. Me and Don dancing together in black and white.

Don squinted at the screen and said, "Boy, do I really dance that badly?"

"Moving on," I said.

Mikey threw down his book and said, "Hey, where am I?"

Don flipped through a few screens and then pointed. "There."

He was sitting at a table, laughing with about ten college age guys. "Where's Raph?" he asked.

There was Raph. I couldn't make out what he was doing. He was with a woman and he had his sai out.

Don asked, "Is he trying to cut off that girl's jeans with his sai?"

We all laughed.

"And last is Leo." Don searched for a second and then scratched his head. "Huh. I can't see him."

"What?" I pushed him aside so that I could see. "He should be there. He didn't leave or anything."

Don rewound the tape again and said, "I don't see him. There's just those people over there and that couple in the booth."

"Guys…" Mikey said.

I said, "Maybe he's in the bathroom."

"Guys…"

"I'll check another camera."

"Guys… he's in the booth," Mikey said through gritted teeth.

Don and me both squinted at the screen and I said, "That isn't him. Those two are totally making out… Holy shit! That is him!"

"Who's that with him?" Don yelled hysterically. "Is it you?"

"I was with you!" Looking back I probably should have said something about how I would never do that.

"Maybe it's your doppelganger," Mikey said helpfully. "Or a mirage. Or we're having a group hallucination."

"It's a mistake," Don said, even as he rewound the tape and replayed the horror show again. "It's gotta be. It isn't him."

"How many other giant turtles did you see there?"

"Three," Mikey said. He didn't seem particularly interested and he was reading his Emily Dickinson again.

I watched the tape as Leo settled into the booth. It took about ten minutes and then they were at each other. "How long were they… involved…?"

Don sped up the tape. "Over an hour."

We both stared at the image of Leo necking, quite enthusiastically, with some woman none of us had ever seen before. It was like staring at something awful and the sheer awfulness of it makes you want to keep watching. Like "Jersey Shore."

Don finally minimized the window and turned to me, looking like somebody with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and said, "We'll never talk about it again! We'll destroy the tapes and pretend it didn't happen! Nobody needs to know."

"What didn't happen?" Leo had to come in the room at that moment.

Mikey said without looking up, "That you didn't totally make out with a strange woman last night."

I cannot describe the awkwardness of that moment. Mikey was loving it. All Leo could manage to say was, "Oh?"

And then I felt a little stupid. We were making a big deal out of it. It wasn't like he slept with her or anything. Ugh. I can't even…

Anyway, I was feeling a little nauseous and Leo was trying to look really innocent and then he said, "How do we know it wasn't you, Mikey? You like kissing girls."

"Nice try, Fearless. I only pecked those girls. You were probably licking her tonsils. (Insert agonized groan from Don) And plus, I don't carry katanas."

"Right." So his one bluff didn't work.

Don was in full blown denial and said, "Right. We'll never talk about it. We'll go destroy the tapes." I think his brain was trapped in a circuit.

I said, "I guess you got over your fear of women, Leo. Congratulations."

"Quit making such a big deal," Leo said. "It's none of your business anyway. Any why are we all talking about me? Don's the one who scored ecstasy last night. If you want to get after somebody, then get after him."

"DONATELLO!" I yelled.

"Hey, I'm not going to take it or anything. It's strictly for research purposes. I'm going to feed it to rats and watch them go crazy."

Mikey was giggling across the room. "Nobody look at me. I'm the good one."

Raph pushed Leo through the doorway and said, "What's everybody looking at? Is that you and her?" He rushed over to look at the screen. "Wow, look at you. You're really going at it. I thought you were exaggerating. Good technique."

"Raph, you're not helping," I said.

"Good. I wasn't trying to help."

"Turn that off!" Leo said.

Don had the video looping in the background and I think it was weirding him out. As he turned it off he said, "Raph, why were you trying to cut off a girl's pants?"

"Cut off her pants?" He screwed up his face like it took a lot of thought to remember since he does it so often, you know. "Oh, yeah. Well, I was just cutting up the legs. It wasn't like I started at the waistband or anything. And she gave me her phone number so… We were having a contest to see who could get the most phone numbers."

That explained a lot.

Raph elbowed Leo and said, "Did you get Miss Kissyface's number?"

Leo shook his head.

"You're a real player, huh?" Raph was really enjoying this. He revels when Leo gets himself into trouble. It's so rare. "How many did you get anyway?"

"Four." Definitely not as much bravado as last night.

"I got seven. But one was a dude. I asked a girl and then the guy next to her handed one over too."

Raph has this problem where he can't figure out when people want him to shut up. I think it's because he's usually so sullen that he's never had to develop the talent of tact and I think we're all secretly afraid of him too. "But what you got was better than a phone number."

"Would you shut up!" Leo had lecture face. It's ironic since his behavior was in question here. Not ours.

Master Splinter had been listening in the living room the whole time and casually entered the lab and then whacked Leo in the stomach with his cane. Mikey and Raph both collapsed in fits. I gasped with shock. Don just raised his eyebrow ridges.

"You know that I allow much leeway on Halloween," Splinter said. I could tell that he was about to breath flames. "But I would at least expect you, Leonardo, to have common respect for women."

"I did! I mean, I do! She asked me… It was…" He hung his head as he rubbed his gut.

"That is all that I have to say for now. You will do 500 flips."

Raph was sobering up, but Mikey could hardly breathe.

So Leo went straightaway to do his 500 flips. I don't know how Splinter knew he'd done 500. I guess they use the honor system. It took him the rest of the night. I think he was probably relieved to have an excuse to get away from us and I suspect that was the real reason for the length of the punishment because Splinter didn't look nearly as infuriated a few minutes later.

I heard Mikey say as I left, "You guys should have let me play. I got two phone numbers and I wasn't even trying."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Splinter asked me to have a talk with Leo. THE talk. Makes sense. Splinter doesn't have any expertise in this area.

So Leo came over under the guise of a mission to fix a simple problem with my toilet. It wasn't really a guise, I guess. I was going to make him do that first before I humiliated him.

"Why didn't you ask Don?" he asked as he put the toilet tank lid in the bathtub.

"Isn't he busy watching those rats of his die of drug overdoses? He's pretty sick sometimes."

He was fiddling around with the parts inside the tank. "Well, maybe he's working out what happened with that Doctor from Hades. You know, working it out in his own way. His own sick Donny way."

Leo finished fixing the toilet. It was pretty easy. I mean, I was going to do it myself before Splinter asked me to talk to him. He was about to leave and I said, "Sit down here. We need to have a talk."

He sat on the toilet lid.

"No, go sit on the couch." So he blindly obeyed and I followed him. I like it when they listen. I stood in front of him, while he looked up at me and I stuttered for a whole thirty seconds and wrung my hands. Then I finally said, "We need to have a talk about… about… something important… about… uh…"

"Sex?" he provided.

"Yeah, about that." Ugh. "Anyway, it seems appropriate now that you're nearly seventeen and you're maturing faster than your brothers."

He didn't look embarrassed. Maybe a little annoyed and surprised. "I'm flattered that you've noticed."

Yuck. Ick. "Well, I'm going to tell you what the women in the O'Neil family have been passing down from mother to daughter for generations. It's the best advice my mother had for me and now I'm giving it to you."

He was sitting up, all prim and proper. He had to look really wide eyed right then. "Thank you."

I took a deep breath and said, "Sex is evil. Don't do it. You'll get pregnant the first time and birth control doesn't really work."

He cocked his head a little and looked suspicious. "Are you making fun of me?"

"No, that's what my mother said to me, although looking back it isn't really appropriate in your case."

"I don't see myself getting pregnant, no."

Failed attempt. What to say next. What to say next. Nothing came to me.

He said, "You don't have anything to worry about. I won't get anybody pregnant. I physically can't. Well, the fault isn't on my end, if you know what I mean."

Yes, I did know what he meant. Gross. Yuck. "How do you know you can't get anybody pregnant?"

He went very red and was quiet for a second and said, "Have you ever seen our… we aren't compatible. Trust me."

I started giggling. That kind of really embarrassed giggling that you can't repress. I tried to block out what he had said. I think this conversation has scarred me for life. And I have to do it three more times. What am I going to say to Raph!

Anyway, I said, "I thought you weren't interested in human women. What happened with this broad at the club?"

He looked down and broke eye contact. "Let's not go there."

"I just wondered if you needed to talk about it. I can't see your brothers being a very sympathetic ear."

Leo motioned for me to sit next to him and then it took him a few minutes to prepare himself to speak. I had a feeling like I didn't want him to start. Finally, he said, "It started off as a game, you know. Just one of those stupid games that Raph likes to play so that he can prove that he's better than me at something." He quickly added, "I usually let him win."

"Yeah, yeah. Anyway."

"It seemed like a good game. Phone numbers are solid proof and they can be counted. I like to flirt, you know." He said it quietly, like he was afraid that somebody would overhear him.

I whispered back, "Yeah, I noticed."

He looked a little shy and then recovered. He said, "It started out well. It only takes a few sweet words to win girls over, it seems. I was disappointed at the lack of a challenge."

"Should have tried to cut their clothes off," I said. "Bet that would have made it more challenging."

"I got four numbers and then moved on to a fifth woman. I think she was a little older than you. She asked me to buy her a drink and when I hesitated, she accused me of being underage. Well, not really accused. Joked."

"What did you say?"

"I played it off. Flirted. She asked me to sit at a booth with her and then she asked me how old I am. I told her that I'm older in spirit than in body."

I rolled my eyes. He's a right Casanova.

"And she said that she was older in spirit than in body." He was getting a soppy expression. "We went through the obligatory cycle of flirtation and eventually I asked for her phone number, but she said, 'Why don't we skip that and go my place?'"

"A woman tried to score with you? Holy crap."

He took it wrong and looked flattered. Then he realized that I was mortified that a thirty-plus year old woman tried to take him home with her and looked sober again. "Anyway, I told her that while…" He hesitated and looked like he was going to clam up.

"Don't worry. I won't say a thing until you're finished."

"I said that while the mind is willing, the flesh is not."

"Ouch. Bet she thought you were gay." I don't know why I said that. Guess I thought it was my turn to talk.

Pink tones were creeping up in his face and I could tell I was getting close to the juicy bit. "I had allowed this to move outside of the game and into a place of action. She said that there was still some hope for her then and I said that I was sorry, but there wasn't. My fate was laid before me. She told me that I'm too young to know that."

"She sounds like a Greek philosopher."

"I believe that I'm paraphrasing. I said it had nothing to do with youth and that… uh… It's kind of embarrassing…" He waited for a signal from me. He wanted to keep talking, but I think he was worried that I was feeling awkward.

"Go on. It's not like you slept with her. Don't get so worried."

He laughed and said, "It does sound trivial when you put it like that. I said that what I… want… doesn't exactly exist." He cleared his throat. "She pointed out that I had just said that my mind was willing. So she told me close my eyes and imagine what I want."

He was getting a little vague and I wondered if he was doing it on purpose. He saw my confused expression and said, "We were much more suggestive in tone and gesture at the time. I know that it sounds lame in the retelling." I guess he didn't want me to think that he'd be seduced by a woman who couldn't keep up with his sexy voice. "But I closed my eyes and you know… I couldn't really see anything. I mean, I didn't picture a human, or anything. But I can't imagine… what would be…"

"Compatible?"

"I suppose so. But then I heard her say that I should take what I need and…"

I was still a mite confused at the inferences, but I said, "Sounds an awful lot like using people to me."

He ignored that statement and said, "Then she kissed me and I… just lost myself in it."

I hoped it wouldn't get into more detail but…

"I imagine that kissing one of our kind is similar to kissing a human. Mouths are mouths."

"Yeah, it is," I said, without thinking.

Leo looked at me knowingly, but chose not to pursue the topic. It was awkwardly quiet for a while and then he said, "I only have one night a year that I can stop being me for a while and this year I chose to drown myself in a woman for hour. I can't see what's so wrong with that."

I wrinkled up my nose. I couldn't help it. It was involuntary. I said, "She told you to image she was a female turtle and then macked on your for an hour."

He elbowed me and said, "You make it sound dirty."

"Bet she has a turtle fetish."

"And that's bad thing?" Good. The stressful part of the story was over. It was okay to laugh now. "Well, it's better than Raph. Do you know how he was picking up girls? He told them that he benches 300 pounds, drives a Maserati, that he's a trained assassin, he used play bass for John Mayer, he's independently wealthy, and he can 'meditate' as long as Sting. Then he claimed that he really wrote 'Your Body is a Wonderland.'"

We cracked up and I had to put my head between my legs. "Oh, that's so wrong. He's as subtle as a…"

"Sai to the head?" he suggested.

So we resolved all that for now. Leo's quick becoming a man and I don't like it at all. As he was leaving he had to say, "And don't worry about me trying anything on human women. If anybody tries to experiment with a human, it'll be sweet innocent Don. Goodnight."

Left me with a whole new mental horror show to deal with.


	50. Chapter 50

_I was going to move on to a different topic but I realized that it would take them at least a few days to live this episode down. Plus, I thought of further ways to embarrass April._

Dear Diary,

Went to the lair with cookies because I had to check on my Don later that night and make sure he didn't have an aneurism. The idea of Leo being… involved with a woman like seems to have driven him a little batty. I don't know why. The Gentry thing didn't bother him that much.

Leo was on the couch with Mikey cuddled against him and I hid for a second to eavesdrop. Because like Raph said. I'm a sneak.

Mikey asked, "If you ever met Buffy Summers, would you go out with her?"

"What kind of a stupid question is that?"

"A hypothetical question. She seems like a good match for you. She likes half-breeds. She's a warrior. She has that whole 'heavy is the crown' thing going on. I think she'd appreciate the katana stuck up your ass."

Leo sighed loudly and said, "You're amazing sometimes and not in a good way."

"Bet April would go out with you. She's desperate."

Grrr.

"Just shut up, please."

It was quiet for a second and then, as soon as I took a step towards them, Mikey said, "Hey, that wasn't an answer. Would you go out with April?"

He didn't respond immediately. There was a one second hesitation and Leo said, like he was reading off a cue card, "These kinds of speculations aren't useful at all."

"You would! You totally would!" He sat up and pointed at him.

Leo said, "So what? We all know that Don would and nobody gets on him about it."

Then I heard Raph say, "I would too. Where's the peanut butter?"

Mikey said, "You would not, Butch. If you were human you'd be married to Shirley Manson and traveling around the country with the Hell's Angels."

"I don't want to have another 'If We Were Human' discussion, okay," Leo said, sounding strained.

"Why do you guys all want to date April?" Mikey asked. I was ready to slap that one silly.

Raph did it for me and slapped him upside the head. "It's not like that. She's the only girl we know besides that Gentry chick and it would be weird if we didn't think about it. I mean, what it would be like if she was like us. Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"Maybe a little," Mikey said unwillingly.

Leo said sternly, "And it's totally useless speculation anyway and I think it does more harm than good to entertain the idea."

"Guess you're right," Raph said. "Want to watch Nascar?"

I could hear the sound of cars zooming. I was about to step forward and announce my presence again when Leo said, "It's harmful to them and to us. It's wrong to use people."

"This sounds fairly autobiographical, Fearless," Raph said. "What's wrong with you? A woman let you take advantage of her. It's her problem, not yours. Just enjoy it."

"Don't you see how much harder it makes… everything now?" Leo said, sounding frustrated. "It makes meditation nearly impossible."

"Just read that Taoism for Virgins book that you like so much," Mikey said. "And we all know that Raph thinks about sex a lot and he masturbates all the time. Just do what he does. Let's talk about something else. Leo, I don't want to know about your sex life."

"I don't have one and never will! That's the point!" Then he stormed off to his bedroom.

Raph said, "And they say we're the problem children. And you're the jerk off. Not me."

So I went home because I was a little too embarrassed to see them right then. I know I should have expected that. It's true. I am the only girl they know.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Going to take the bull by the horns and give them all THE talk in one fell swoop. Two talks instead of four. Leo's will serve as the warm up.

So I went over to the lair and got Splinter's blessing. He seems elated that he won't have to do it.

As soon as I got in the lair I could hear one of my Nine Inch Nails CDs playing. Turns out that every time Leo comes in the room he hears, "I want to fuck you like an animal… I want to feel you from the inside…" And then lots of tee heeing from Mikey. I don't know how Splinter's putting up with them right now. Raph likes Nine Inch Nails a lot, so he probably doesn't even notice.

I checked on Don and found him sitting happily in the lab by himself. He made a wooden box with a screen on top and he was watching his rats going crazy inside. They were squealing loudly and knocking into the sides of the box.

So I gathered all four of them up, which was hard, and lined them all up together on the couch. I stood in front of them again and said, "Now, with recent stuff that's been going on, I thought it would be worthwhile to have a little talk about… something important that's been… discussed amongst us lately…"

"Sex," Leo said to them.

Don covered his ears and went, "Lalalala."

"You're real mature, Don," I said. "Anyway, I know that it must be on your minds. You're all sixteen now." Leo had to correct me and say that Mikey's still officially fifteen. Like that matters at all. "Well, I just thought that we should talk about, you know, responsibility and whatnot."

"For what?" Raph said. "It's not like anything will ever happen with us."

"Let's pretend for a minute, Raph, that you met a female turtle. What would you do?"

Raph said immediately, "I would fuck her until I could fuck no more."

The others all laughed hysterically. Even Leo.

"Okay, let's go with that. And when this glorious fuck fest is over, you find out that she's pregnant."

"Oh. Oops. Knew I forgot something. I would use a condom."

"Too late," Mikey said. "She's knocked up."

"You'd have to pay child support," Leo said.

Raph defended himself and said, "No I wouldn't! Like we're in the system? They couldn't make me pay up. Not that I wouldn't cover my responsibilities. I'd raise the kid and all."

"What would you name it?" Don asked.

Mikey said, "Oh, name it after me!"

"It's a girl," Raph said. "So I'd name it..."

"Shirley?" Leo supplied.

This conversation was getting sidetracked. I said, "I know you guys are living under unusual circumstances and…"

"It sounds totally useless to have a sex talk with guys who can't do it in the first place," Don said, getting up. "I have to check on the rats again."

"What would you do it you met this female turtle?" I asked. I was really curious.

"Depends. Has Raph gotten to her first?"

"No, you can have her," Raph said benevolently.

"Okay. I don't know if I would do anything. I mean, I'm pretty happy on my own. I don't think I'd have anything to talk to her about."

"It's not about talking, really," Leo said, smirking.

"I don't know. Maybe if she was really cool. I'm not, like, sitting around going, 'I need a woman,' like these three. I have other stuff I think about. Guess I'm not that highly sexed. I'm glad though. I'm happy the way I am."

Ah, he makes life so much easier on me. I moved on. "What would you do, Mike?"

"I would be a gentleman and get to know her first and then marry her." He smiled a brilliant and corny grin at Leo for brownie points.

Raph said, "If Leo met her then Splinter would be a grandfather in five minutes flat."

"Doesn't it take longer than that?" Mikey asked.

I'm going to have to boil my brain in bleach later today. I said, "Let's forget the theoretical girl turtle scenario." It was both pointless and disturbing all at the same time. Congrats, me. "Okay, let's talk about something much more immediate, like human/ turtle relations. Sexual and otherwise."

Don groaned and Leo shifted awkwardly. "We already talked about this," Leo said.

"We didn't," Mikey said. "I'm opposed!"

I sat on the coffee table and resisted the urge to slap him. "It's not a right and wrong thing exactly. And how can you be opposed? Kissed fifteen girls lately?"

"That was barely kissing. I hardly touched them. Leo had this hands all over that chick."

Raph had to pick that up and run with it. "Really? What did you get to touch?"

"Agh! Who cares!" I said. "I don't care if Leo copped a feel on that woman! The point is whether or not it's a good idea. You're supposed to be in secrecy and I assume that lady figured out that you weren't in costume while she was… you know…"

"Groping him," Mikey said. Raph and Mikey elbowed each other. Those two are the giggle twins today.

Leo said, "That has occurred to me. I think that is a new concern that we need to keep in mind. If humans touch us, they can definitely feel that we're flesh and not vinyl. We need to keep that in mind whenever we claim that we're wearing costumes. Didn't you claim that when you interacted with La Cosa Nostra, Raphael?"

"Yeah, but he never made out with me, so…"

"Did he touch you?"

"Fuck, no!" He backed away from Leo a few inches and squashed into Mikey.

"Did you ever hug him or anything?"

Raph thought for a minute. "Maybe. Probably."

"This goes for rescues as well," Leo said, all professionalism. "If you let them touch you, they'll know that you're real."

The meeting ended and Don sent Mikey to check on the rats while he prepared his next caffeine dose. Mikey yelled from the lab, "They're fine. They're all asleep. Isn't that funny? One of them is sleeping on his back with his feet in the air."

Don had been pouring Pepsi into a Hannah Montana glass and stopped. He ran into the lab and cried out, "They're all dead! How did that happen! I'm so sorry, little rats!"

I heard Raph say, "Well, at least they died happy."

* * *

Dear Diary,

We had a little funeral for the rats. The boys all wore black masks, which looked extremely bizarre and they made me go home and change into black. There were a few noteworthy eulogies given.

Raph appointed himself pallbearer so that he wouldn't have to speak and he spent the whole time trying to find a place in the tunnel to dig a hole. So he was carrying a shoebox full of dead rats and a shovel back and forth while we gave speeches to each other.

Leo said, "I'm sure that Buffy, Xander and Willow were good rats with a large and loving family. Now they go to the big piece of cheese in the sky." He was having trouble seeing the tragedy in the situation.

Mikey is a great lover of all creatures great and small and Don is soft-hearted so they were both whimpering sadly.

Then Master Splinter says, "Goodbye, my small brethren. I hope that in the future, my sons will not senseless kill others of your kind."

Donny had to repress a sad cry then.

Leo had to keep hamming it up and he kept saying things like, "I'm sure in heaven your bedding will always be clean and the hamster wheel will turn through eternity, like a squeaky metal ouroboros."

And then Don said, "You were good rats and I'm sorry that I ended your lives too soon. True, Xander did bite me a few times, but I think it was just high spirits."

Leo patted him on the shell and said, "I don't think it wasn't personal."

Then Raph yelled, "Damn it!" as the shovel slipped and he cut one of his feet with the blade. He dropped the box on the ground so that he could inspect his foot.

Mikey said, "Hey! Have some respect, Raph!"

Raph said, "They're all dead. They didn't feel anything."

I said, "Goodbye, rats. I'm sure your deaths will contribute in some way to the Hamato family's medical knowledge." Either that or Don tormented you for no reason and your deaths are meaningless.

So Raph dug a shallow grave and Splinter formally placed them in the hole and Don covered the shallow grave with earth. Then Raph helpfully tried to stamp the ground with his foot and we could hear the box collapsing under his weight.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Sissy Hallowell just called and asked me and Raph to house sit for her. She needs somebody to feed her twenty cats. Don't know what he'll say.


	51. Chapter 51

_Most of the women in my family have hoarding disorder, like those people on TV. It's just something you work around. It's not especially embarrassing to me anymore, but I was at my great aunt's house the other day and thinking about what an interesting background it's given me. This episode with the kittens happened to my friends. It was very traumatic for them and they refuse to talk about it. My mother and I had the privilege of actually birthing kittens. I've done it. It was a scary business. I wonder how many parents got that same question after Watergate when they watched news. I wanted somebody else to be the focus and get away from Raph, but Sissy wouldn't let any of his brothers do it. _

Dear Diary,

Raph said yes to Sissy. He likes her a lot. He likes old people. That surprises me. He doesn't get along with younger people. Besides me and his brothers anyway. So I asked him if he wanted me to stay with him and at first he said that the wanted to spend some time by himself but then he learned that she has 20 cats, kittens on the way, and hoarding disorder, so he asked me to come along.

Sissy's spending a week in Ohio at her daughter's house. Her daughter won't come up to see her because of the family shame about her house.

So Sissy gave us a tour and the first thing I noticed was that she has a front porch but it's so full of boxes and other stuff that you can't get in there or see in the windows. And she has other rooms that you can't get in either. The kitchen is more livable and so is the living room. All the stuff is pushed off to the sides so that she has some space. She has a bedroom and only half the bed is available for sleeping. There's stuff stacked on the half by the wall. I don't really fancy sleeping there.

And, oh yeah. She has some bags of stuff against the bathroom door so that it's propped open. Raph didn't really care. Coming from his family, I can see why. But she has a big glorious bathtub that looks like it might be a hot tub. One of those geriatric therapy tubs.

The cats. Oh, the cats. It smells like a musty cat smell. I told Raph that he'd have to deal with the litter boxes because I'm pregnant, but he didn't believe me. I wonder if I could fake a pregnancy test just to pick on him. We got there at night and Raph was jumpy because we had to wait on the doorstep and he was afraid he'd be seen, so I kind of tried to shield him with the screen door. When he knocked, I could see a herd of cats run for cover. Sissy didn't hear the door, but she saw the cats jumping under the couch and heading towards the bathroom and realized somebody was at the door.

She said that we can move stuff around if we have to, but don't get rid of anything and we have to move it back when we're done. She's actually afraid that we'll clean her house for her. Obviously, she doesn't know us very well.

First thing Raph did was sit in the hot tub for a few hours. I peaked in on him splashing around in there while six cats watched. One brave individual wanted to get in and he held his leg up for a stepping stone and said, "Don't worry. Come on in." Then it sat on his knee and tapped its paws in the water. That was pretty funny. I think he spent the majority of the time trying to coax cats to join him.

"You guys should get one of those in the lair," I said when he was finished and toweling himself off.

"No, we'd never get anything done."

Then I tried to make dinner for us. She has a gas stove and I put a big pot full of water on the burner. I turned it on and the gas was so strong that flames shot a foot out in all directions when it ignited. A cat was sitting nearby on the counter and went flying into the next room.

Raph moved all that stuff off the bed. The problem with moving the stuff to free up space is that you have to put it someplace else and there's already a premium on space around here. So he put it under the kitchen table, which already had a few bags under it. I moved the bags away from the bathroom door. I know he doesn't care if I see him, but I care if he sees me.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 2 of cat sitting.

Woke up to find Raph sleeping on the couch, buried in cats.

Mama Cat's not looking so hot. She keeps looking at me like, "You're a woman. You understand." I made up a little box for her to sit in. Just sits there looking like, "Help! Get them out!"

There's this one cat that keeps biting Raph. He tried to pick it up to move it off the couch and it bit him. He fed it and it bit him. He got out of the bathtub and it bit his toe. He calls it Satan.

Leo came over tonight and said that maybe Satan can see into the true nature of people.

Raph's first words to him were, "There's a hot tub. Want to try it?"

So Leo and Raph got in the hot tub and then they badgered me to get in with them and it's not like a big proper hot tub. Why do I have a feeling that all five of us will be in here tomorrow night? I only took off my pants and got in and Leo said, "I don't see the point. We can see all your goods through your shirt anyway."

"I'd like to pretend, okay."

Raph and Leo were kicking each other. "You see us naked all the time. It's only fair," Raph said.

They just say that kind of thing to embarrass me because they know it works. They could care less if I'm naked.

Leo asked, "So what's up with this lady? Her house isn't safe and the cats? Not sanitary. I think you should clean some stuff away from the heat vents."

"She told us not to," I said.

Raph made a face and said, "I'm on a vacation here. I don't want to clean."

Leo said, "Well, she obviously doesn't know what's good for her. I think her daughter should come here and clean this house out whether she likes it or not. It's for her own good. What if somebody reported her to the city? I'm sure there are lots of code violations."

"See, this is what's wrong with you," Raph said. "You're always thinking of what's best for other people. You can't figure out that other people can look out for themselves. You just assume that we're all incompetent."

Ugh. I knew they'd been getting along too well. It was kind of funny that they had a shouting match sitting in the bath tub. Well, Leo defended his position that Sissy's daughter should clean her house, even going so far as to say that she should get legal guardianship over her. I wonder if he said that to piss Raph off. It worked and he said, "GET OUT OF MY BATH TUB!" A cat jumped off the edge of the bath tub and looked at him warily.

So Leo climbed over me and dried off. Raph was steamed. Literally, I guess.

Leo left and Raph and I watched Mama Cat for a while. She's so fat that she can't walk. I had to hold her belly so she could get to the litter box. Raph seems concerned. He's never been a party to procreation before. He keeps holding his phone, ready to call Don for instructions at any minute.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We made kittens today! Well, we didn't make them. We helped.

Raph was busy feeding the cats and getting bitten by Satan this morning. It's so funny to listen to him because he talks to them. He was saying, "You're Roxie right? You get the diet food. You have your own plate. Back off. You little ones are smell kinda bad. Stop fighting with him. What did he do to you? I'm going pull out your whiskers if you do that again. Ow! Satan!"

Then he whacked that cat so hard I hear it in the next room and then Satan streaked past me and hid under the couch.

"I need to get out of here for a while," he said. "I feel like an old lady."

"Can't. Daytime. I have class soon."

He looked tragic.

"Don't worry. I'll be back in a few hours."

So I went to class and I turn off my phone so that I wouldn't get yelled at and I looked at my phone when class was over and I had about fifteen calls from Raph and three from Don. Mama Cat had her kittens while I was gone and Don couldn't come over to help him. Although Don hinted that he'd told him to boil water and when he did that he told him to fill it with spaghetti for dinner.

I got back to Sissy's and Raph was strung out like he'd been drinking coffee all day.

"Congratulations, you're the proud father of six kittens," I said as we watched them rolling around each other in a furry ball in their box. They make a funny little squeaking noise like mice.

He won't tell me what happened. Apparently, kitten birthing was too traumatic for him. Like I said before. The boy has decapitated a guy with a garbage can lid, but he can't talk about watching kittens being born.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 3

Spent the day hypnotically watching the kittens. Raph won't touch them. I kept picking them up and carrying them around all the time.

Raph caught Satan sitting by the kitten box, batting them around. He screamed at him and flung him through the air like a missile.

Watched "The Puerile and the Fidgety" together. Ford finally came back from Morocco. Turned out that Javier had him arrested so he could take control of Gingivitis Enterprises, the family owned company. I looked at him and said, "You're right. We are turning into old ladies." We're going to go out tonight and get into trouble.

Caught him playing with the babies. I told him to pick one of them up and he said, "What if I break it? It's so tiny." But I finally convinced him. So that was cute.

Don and Mike came over tonight. Mikey had a joygasm over the kittens and wouldn't put them down the whole time he was there and instantly named them all Ronno, Hersey, Yoda, Micro, Onyx and Eustace. He asked Don, "Think we could have some of the kittens?"

"Maybe."

Raph said, "I don't know. I don't think I want any of these things. They look like mice. And they have little needles for claws."

Don said, "Butch, are you still bothered because you had to clean them all?"

Raph made a funny face like he'd bitten a lemon. "Don't remind me."

"Clean them all?" I hadn't heard this yet.

Don was rubbing a kitten on his face and said, "Yeah, the mother just dropped them all over the house and he had to take five of them out of their sacks and clean them off so they could breathe and break their umbilical cords and everything. He's a true daddy."

"I'm going out," Raph said.

We giggled at him and Mikey said, "When are we having the kitten shower?" as the screen door slammed behind him.

Don was fascinated by the hoarding. He'd do it himself if he could get away with it. He and Mikey wanted to look at her stuff, but I sent them home.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 4

Took a picture of three cats sitting on top of the fridge this morning. I put the pot on the stove and jumped back two feet automatically. I'm really getting that hang of it.

Raph keeps eyeballing the kittens suspiciously.

Talked to Don a long time on the phone today while Raph was busy cleaning the litter box. I don't think I've ever heard him cuss that much. Don and Mikey are coming back tonight so they can play with the babies and root around for cool stuff.

I feel like Raph's wife. He's not that interesting to live with. You'd think a mutant teenage ninja would be more entertaining.

Although today, I sat in the bath tub again in my t-shirt and underwear while he sat on the toilet lid, reading a newspaper from Nixon's impeachment. "She should start a museum," he said. Pause. "What's Deep Throat?"

I gagged and said, "How do you know about that?"

"It's the informant's name, isn't it?" he said, holding up the paper. "What's it mean? Kind of a strange term."

"Uh… It's porn, sweetie."

"What's it mean though?"

I didn't answer and he kept reading the paper and I forgot about it eventually and then after a while he said, "I'll figure it out on my own if you don't tell me."

So I gave a really sketchy description and he seemed satisfied. That's the good thing about him. He's not terribly curious.

Don and Mikey came over as soon as it was dark and went straight for the kittens. They were both claiming which ones they wanted to keep. Mikey claimed Onyx and Don claimed Ronno. I might even take one myself. If Sissy allows it anyway.

I couldn't restrain Don from investigating around the house. We went out to the garage and found some cool stuff. Raph found a Handy Hannah Hairdryer. Looked like the first one ever made. Don wanted to plug it in to see if it worked, but I was afraid of a short. We found a wringer washer and Don wants to try that out. But I said that Sissy didn't give us permission to play with her stuff. We can look as long as we put everything back.

Mikey found some old disc sleds and whined because he wanted to take one home. They clearly weren't getting the message that this stuff belonged to somebody else. There was a big rusty scale that Don suspected came from a barn to weigh grain. It said I weighed 528 pounds. Some old furniture that's kind of wrecked. There was a bamboo shoot that was attached to the wall. Lots of old dishes in boxes.

Don and Mikey were sent home because they wouldn't stop asking to keep Sissy's stuff. Don kept saying, "She has so much junk. She'll never miss it."

Raph yelled, "SHE WILL TOO MISS IT! WHY DO YOU THINK SHE TOLD ME NOT TO GET RID OF IT?"

He had a point. Caught Raph very cautiously patting a kitten like it would jump up and bite him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 5

Woke up and found Raph sitting by the kitten box again. He's getting attached against his will, I think. The mother was about to get up and leave and he pushed her down a little and said, "You should stay with the kittens. Where are you going?" Had a little bit of that tone of voice he was using when he had amnesia and it bothered me, but I didn't say anything.

Things are getting pretty boring around here. There isn't enough room in here for Raph to train and so he's been kind of sitting around, reading old newspapers all day.

I moved some stuff from in front of a door in the kitchen and found that it went down to the basement. I asked Raph to go with me. There are lots of boxes of books and papers and they're all kind of black and soggy and half rotten. "Hope this stuff wasn't important," I said.

There were rows and rows of canned goods on the wall. Raph took a jar and read, "October 1948. Still looks good."

So we took the jar upstairs and he wanted to open them to see what they were like. The rings on the jar like were rusty, but the food inside looked good.

He opened the jar and stirred the peaches with a fork and smelled inside the jar. "Smells good." Then he ate one before I could stop him.

"Those peaches are older than my mom!" I said.

"Yeah, so? They taste fine." And he ate all the peaches in the jar.

And now he's been eating ancient canned goods all day. Sissy gave us permission to eat whatever we liked and I guess this counts. I told him that if he dies of botulism then I'll never forgive him.

I tried to find something for dinner, but she doesn't exactly have stuff that makes meals. Lots of thin, starchy food. She has lots of one kind of thing, but not the other stuff to make a meal. She has three gross of kidney beans under the table, but nothing else to make chili.

Raph was watching wrestling in the living room and yelling at Satan to stop climbing the curtains and I was looking in the pantry. She had Peter Pan peanut butter that was older than me. Then I felt fingers jab into my ribs and I screamed and landed on the floor with the peanut butter jar in my hand. Raph ran into the room, sais drawn.

It was Mikey. I yelled at him for a few seconds and said that nothing they did could appease my anger. So Leo tickled me under the arms and made me laugh.

Leo was reading the Nixon newspapers because Raph seemed to get a real kick out them. Don and Mikey were hunting around in the pantry and then they all sat around eating fifty year old food for a while. I'm sure they'll all die.

Don wanted to get into one of the rooms that's blocked off and he and Mikey worked at moving the stuff so they could open the door. We finally got one of the bedroom doors cracked open and it was full almost to the ceiling. There was an old rocking chair on top and the room looked like it was locked in time, back in the fifties when it was last used. It's actually kind of cool.

Mikey found a Victrola under some boxes and a pile of records and we listened to Paul Whiteman Orchestra, which I'd never heard before, and looked at Sissy's family albums. Felt like we'd all gone back in time.

Raph took off. He needed to beat up some guys before bed.

Later, I played in the hot tub with Leo, Mike and Don and felt like a 12 year old. We made quite a mess. We drank Dr. Pepper out of wine goblets. I don't know why. It was Mike's idea.

Don's phone went off and he bent over the edge of the tub to answer it. Leo kept give me these really funny looks, like raising his eyebrow ridges at me. I'm laughing now as I write it. Mikey wasn't paying enough attention to take advantage of the situation. He was busy trying to get a cat to drink Dr. Pepper out of his goblet. Leo couldn't resist the temptation and slapped Don on the ass really hard.

"Hey, that's unwanted touching!" Don yelled. He turned around and said, "Mikey, that hurt."

"It was Leo."

Leo looked perfectly cool. Don said, "I'm an abused child."

Finally Leo said, "It was me okay."

So Don pushed his head under the water. Lots of splashing for a while. Water was everywhere.

"I bet this is what rich people do," Mikey said.

"Yeah, drink Dr. Pepper in old ladies' bath tubs?" I said.

After a while we got out and tracked water all over the living room. Mikey broke a glass. Don wanted to take the hot tub apart and see how it worked, but Leo threatened him in Japanese and he dropped it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 6

Tragedy has struck this little family of cats. One of their number is a kitty cannibal.

We woke up this morning and Raph found one kitten's head in the box and the rest were missing. But what do you know? Satan was asleep in the box. The mother was nowhere to be found. So Raph grabs Satan by the neck and shook him until I ordered to put the thing down. Leo spent the night here with us and he was rather annoyed that Raph would try to strangle a cat.

Leo, was the only one with any sense at the moment and looked around the house for the other kittens, thinking that the mother may have moved them. Meanwhile, me and Raph just yelled at Satan and stared sadly at Onyx's head and wondered what we would tell Mikey.

Turns out that either Don or Mike let Mama Cat outside when they left last night and so the kittens were alone and vulnerable the whole night.

Raph was in an understandably foul mood after that and kept stomping around and causing newspaper landslides. "THESE DAMN NEWSPAPERS! I CAN'T WAIT TO GET OUT HERE! IT FEELS LIKE JAIL!"

Leo tried to sooth him. Said he would make tea and that they could sit in the hot tub if he wanted, but Raph threatened to drown Satan, so he decided that would be a bad idea.

Boy, Raph's had an awful day. Leo has consequently had a pretty bad day. Raph went down stairs to fetch more canned peaches and found a nest of cockroaches under a box. They were the biggest ones I've ever seen. He nearly ran outside, but Leo body slammed him against the kitchen door and I was afraid they would fight each other and Sissy's house can't take it. I'm afraid they would fall through the floor and into the basement.

So Leo took him out to the garage and let him beat him up for a while.

I had the sad duty of telling Mikey and Don that their kittens were eaten in the night and had to listen to them bawling on the other end of the phone. I think they have really bad luck with pets. Plus, they still had some residual guilt and grief over those rats.

Raph and Leo came back in the house and Raph sat down for a while and read a TV Guide from 1980. But he kept throwing things at Satan whenever he came in the room. I was glad to have Leo there. He knows how to manage Raph, if you can ever really manage him.

"What are we going to tell Sissy?" I said.

Leo thought for a second and said, "Tell her they ran away." Smart ass.

Raph threw a TV Guide at a cat that was attempting to sit in his lap and picked up a Sears catalog from the 1970's. "Maybe she'll be glad. They were just little furry terds anyway."

Don and Mikey came over to pay their respects and Mikey sat on the couch, listening to "A Summer Place" and weeping over the little box that contained Onyx's head. It was so pathetic that it was hilarious. Don declared that he could never love another cat like his Ronno. I think they were both having this ecstasy of misery. They only knew those rats and kittens for a day or two before they died.

So Leo took his mourning children home and I didn't envy him at all. He was pretty annoyed with them both as they were about to go out the door sniffling, loaded with ancient peaches and he yelled at them, "If I ever have children I'll name them Buffy, Xander, Willow, Onyx and Ronno! There! Are you two happy now?"

Raph was tired of company and practically threw them all out.

Listened to more of her record collection. Raph played "Love is Blue" by Paul Mauriat and I said it felt like we should be stoned when we listened to it. He cracked a small smile.

When I went to bed, he was lying on the couch petting Mama Cat. The two grieving parents. I had to get rid of the box they were in because Mama Cat kept looking in it like she was confused and it was too sad to watch.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Day 7

Raph had one of his panic attacks again last night. What a great way to end his vacation. I wish he would get these at home sometimes and not when he's with me.

He's a tough guy, you know, and so it surprises me that this happens to him. But I've noticed that it only happens when he's had a bug scare.

I woke up because the living room light was on and I can't shut the bedroom door to block it out. She has a sewing machine in front of it. I spent a few minutes trying to get back to sleep, but I heard a noise that I couldn't place and I thought I should check on the cats.

Raph was sitting up on the couch, breathing really hard. He was leaning over and scratching his plastron and I thought he was going to throw up. At first I thought he had botulism from those peaches. He saw me and waved at me to go back into the bedroom. So I went back to bed, but I could hear him breathing as clearly as if I were right next to him. I hate listening to that. He hyperventilates so hard that he's vocalizing his breaths in this loud rasping voice that I think should be used in horror movies. It would be very affective.

It got quieter and I ventured back out into the living room and he was still sitting on the couch, breathing hard. But he was a little better.

I brought him a glass of water and he spilled a little because his hands were shaking so much.

"I'm fine," he said in a weird and grinding tone. "Fell asleep too fast."

"Want to sleep in the bed? There's room."

He said no, but followed me in there anyway. I fully expected to wake up spooned.

"When I was real, real small I fell in this hole," he said. I was surprised he was talking. Looked like he was almost asleep, so I don't know if he even remembers saying this. "And it was full of bugs and I was too small to get out and I yelled a long time and Sensei pulled me out after a while."

Woke up in the morning spoon free. Then I felt that he was holding my wrist and I had to pry every finger free.

He doesn't acknowledge these attacks and it's expected that I won't either. Spent the rest of the morning putting everything back. Raph drop kicked Satan a few times. I'll be glad to get out of here. Wasn't much fun.

Explained what happened with the kittens and Sissy just said she wouldn't have to get rid of them then. She wanted to talk about her daughter and her son-in-law the dentist. And of course we couldn't leave until nightfall, so we had to spend the day with her. But it was okay. Raph likes to talk to her. She told us a story about an uncle of hers who died in an outhouse. Had a heart attack or something. One of her neighbors lost a hand in a combine accident.

In other news, I talked to Leo on the phone while Sissy was telling another story about her dead husband accidentally locking her and her daughter in a rest stop bathroom. He wanted Raph back pretty badly. Don and Mikey were wearing their black bandannas and listening to sad music. He said, "I feel like I'm in this hell where I'm attending a funeral that never ends." I asked if they were listening to his Enigma or Delirium and he didn't answer or honor my knock against his music. Mikey's threatening to write a threnody in Onyx's honor. None of us know what that is, but we're sure he'll make us read whatever it is when it's done if we don't put a stop to it.

I was waiting for the jab about Raph's reproductive organs and as she gave us a bag of miscellaneous stuff that she didn't want, she said, "You know, my sister lives a few houses down from my daughter and we went down there for a day. I got to see some cows mating. Haven't seen that in years."

We weren't paying attention. We were both looking out the door at freedom.

"That bull was nearly as well hung as you, Butch." I don't know if she talks to all young guy that way or just Raph.

It's good to be out of there. I don't want to see another cat as long as I live.


	52. Chapter 52

_I know I mention songs a lot, but it makes me laugh. And I listen to music 75% of the time because I don't have a TV. My sister's ex-boyfriend is the real author of the quintuple dirges._

Dear Diary,

The theme song around the lair today is "Peaches" by The Presidents of the U.S.A.

"I like this song," Mikey said as he ate peaches from the jar. "It sounds really dirty in a way that I can't explain."

Raph was also eating peaches. They were fishing them out with their hands and the fluid in the jar was changing colors from their dirty hands. "Yeah, I know sex is the first thing I think of when I think of peaches."

"You're sixteen," I said. "It's the first, last and only thing you think about."

"Touché," he said, licking syrup off his hands.

Mikey's writes songs. Didn't know that. He pulled out the guitar and played about two chords and then Leo bellowed something obscene from the kitchen. Guess he isn't fond of Mike's songwriting. I expected Raph to be the one to react that way, but he went so far as to try to gag Mikey. Don ignored them all.

His songs can run anywhere from five to ten minutes and there five of them. They are creatively titled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The lyrics are always different. Mikey said, "I'm going to play #3."

"Why don't you title your songs?" I asked, trying to ignore Leo slamming cupboards in protest.

"Because Dave Matthews numbers his songs. If it's good enough for him, then it's good enough for me," he said, strumming.

So he played his song and it had lots of stuff about standing by a girl's grave, trying to give back her love. Whatever that means.

Raph said, "I popped your cherry and I'd like to give it back. Add that line."

Leo laughed from the kitchen and said, "Her virginity was on loan. It expired when she died."

Mikey wasn't pleased. He went right into #4 as a punishment. Most lines about his lover becoming a spirit that won't leave him. He wants to kill her ghost? I don't know.

He finished and Leo said, "That was great, Mike. I'm going to go cut on myself now."

"Sounded an awful lot like 'My Immortal,'" Don said. "I don't like those sad death songs. I like happy songs. Somebody sing something happy. Mikey, write me a happy song. I think it should have the epic title #6."

So Mikey entertained us with the uplifting "My Immortal."

Leo's right. It is just a perpetual funeral around here lately. Don's given it up. He doesn't stay sad for too long. Mikey's reveling in it though. He's been reading lots of depressing Victorian poetry today. He read Edgar Allan Poe poems aloud to us. What a surprise. They're all about dead girls.

He wants to watch one of his movies where everybody dies in the end and the last person looks around goes, "Oh, shit!"

So Mikey set to work writing a happy song for Don. He's listening to happy music and now it sounds like a fun house. For some reason, happy music makes Raph mad. He's stomping around yelling about people moving his stuff when he's gone or something.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey just finished his happy #6. It was just another sad song about his girlfriend dying, but with a bizarre upbeat sound. It sounded like he was making fun of however the poor girl died. She died of consumption, which is a big threat nowadays, you know.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Now he's writing a screenplay. He said to me, "Hey, if we make another movie, then I don't have to be the girl. You're a girl!" It was a big revelation. I'm really dying to see their movies where he is the girl.

He wrote the script in one day. It's about… gasp… a tragic romance. The first boyfriend decides to get revenge and kill his ex and then finds out she already died of consumption and then he wishes she were alive again because he's still in love with her? And guess who's the girl in this scenario? I'm scared of what he'll make me do with my two leading men.

Don and Leo are the leading men and Raph is the bad guy. He's rewrote it because Raph always has to be the bad guy because he has the scariest voice. Mikey's the director.

Okay, so story changes. I'm still in love with Don and Leo, but Raph is my controlling father who forbids me from seeing Don. So I break up with him and go with Leo. Then we get married. Raph hates him too for some reason and kills me because I'm disobedient. Then Don comes back to kill me and finds that I'm dead. He kills Raph in revenge. Leo kills Don to avenge his father-in-law's death and then stands there going, "Oh, shit!" I may have paraphrased but…

Filming locations are limited. The lair, the tunnels, rooftops, my apartment, the pool hall. Raph asked if he can film in Johnny Basso's house and I'm hoping that we don't have to go there and see those two again. Don's got his eye on some of those abandoned places by the docks where he stashes his stuff.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Spent the whole day getting killed. Raph walks in on me in bed with Leo (troubling) and then stabs me to death. So I've been lying in bed all day listening to Mikey telling me, "You're out of frame again. How do you guys keep doing that? All you have to do is lay there."

And the problem with Leo's acting isn't that he's bad. It's that Raph is always making faces at him and cutting up and making him laugh. So he's supposed to be in bed with me and he's facing the other way. Thankfully. And then Raph sneaks in and stabs me and he always says something different. The first time, he said, "For the eorlindas!" Leo was laughing during my murder. Next time he said, "I'm going to kill you and your pretty boy gigolo next!"

He takes great pride in these idiotic lines and he sits around thinking them up. Mikey obviously isn't very appreciative. His line is supposed to be, "You will never disobey me again."

Third take he says, "This is what happens to B students."

Leo was trying to be quiet because he isn't supposed to wake up in this shot. He finds me dead in the morning.

The first time he replaced a line, he was supposed to explain why he hated Don and he was supposed to say, "You're my daughter and I want what's best for you." Instead, he said, "You're my daughter, as far as I know, and I'll care once the DNA results are in."

Not really digging the romance scenes that are upcoming.

Raph was supposed to come in and catch me hugging Don and say, "I'm very disappointed in you, Victoria. You must marry well for the sake of the family. This man is nothing. He has no money. No worth." Raph comes in and screams, "YOU WHORE!" And Leo ruins the shot by laughing off screen. Perfect. Again.

Now Raph has been banished from the set when he isn't needed because he stands behind the camera and makes crude gestures and faces at the actors.

Uh, oh. Director Mikey is being challenged. The Leading Man Leo is now demanding that the director move his light source away from my curtains because it could start a fire. Mutiny is imminent.

They've moved on to one of the fight scenes. Raph is supposed to fight Leo. So Leo keeps advancing on him and then Raph says stuff like, "Ima cut you, bitch!" as soon as he's about to pull his punch, or really hit him in most cases. And then Leo misses. Next shot he kept throwing gang signs behind Don's back.

Leading Man Leo is now questioning Stunt Coordinator Don's blocking. Diva Raph is in his trailer. Director Mikey just had a temper tantrum, hopping up and down and yelling, "I'm in charge here! Quit it, Leo!" Leading Lady April is now going to go away to Kraft services to make a sandwich and wait until the crew has resolved the matter.

Stunt scenes took hours. Descended into lots of macho dares and trash talk.

Now on to my romantic scenes with Leo. Raph has found a new way to ruin these scenes. Leo's nervous. All we're doing is looking sappy and saying we love each other. But he's got the sexy voice down and it feels like he's being really dirty when all he's saying is stuff like, "I'll never leave you." Right before Mikey calls action, Raph says something to Leo. Once he kept whispering, "Kiss! Kiss!" during the whole scene. Next shot he said, "Look at the sexy redhead," right before action was called. Once he said, "Want me to look up the number for the free clinic after this scene, Leo?" And Leo spent the majority of these scenes repressing giggles and choking and making faces. Which contrasted with his sexiness in a really bizarre way.

I did screw up some scenes. Mostly with Don. He has such a funny expression when he acts. His eyes are wide open and he looks kind of scared. That's this concentrating face. We both forgot our lines a lot.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Back in the lair. Now Stunt Coordinator Don has become Editor Don. He and Director Mike are sitting at the computer laughing at all the shots that Raph ruined. There are plenty of them where Don is standing in the frame when he's supposed to be out of the shot. Leo goes, "Get out frame!" and he jumps out the way. That happened at least ten times.

Then there are the endless takes of Raph tripping up Leo. There was one where Raph was supposed to be yelling a challenge at Leo and he said it in this high pitched voice and then Leo was too giggly to say his line and eventually he said, "You sounded like Barry Gibb, just then."

Raph's voice says, "I'm having hormone therapy."

And Leo wasn't the only victim. I was supposed to get down on my knees in front of him and beg for his forgiveness and he says, "Oh, this is how my favorite dream starts."

We have to shoot some scenes over because he successfully ruined every take.

I want a copy of the take where Don and Raph are throwing gang signs and then Don says a whole speech goes something like, "Turtle love, ya'll. This our kingdom. We run these streets, motherfuckers. So you can step off or get cut. Turtle nation, ya'll! We own these alleys! And we own you! Love, honor, respect! We got all of 'em! That's why we kill you, dog."

Raph jumps in front of Don and says, "This my home boy, Royal D! So holla at him!"

Leo collapses in the side of the frame. He wheezed out, "You're trying to kill me." And then he was laughing so hard that he couldn't talk.

He's walking around rubbing his side and saying that he's in physical pain now because they made him laugh so much today.

Mikey didn't anticipate gang members in his epic tragic romance and he's going to have to find creative ways to work around it.

He recorded Splinter giving a somber prologue about the fates of the lovers. It had a profound similarity to "Romeo and Juliet" but I kept my mouth shut. Don wasn't as nice and said, "Now, which one is Juliet? I know it isn't me."

"It's Leo," Raph said.

Leo said, "I thought you were the one having hormone therapy."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just watched the finished product. Took them one day of filming and one day of editing. It turned out pretty well, actually. During the scene with Leo and his porno voice, Mikey had to use lots of loud music to block out Raph going, "Kiss! Kiss!" in the background. So we mostly hear Enigma the whole time. Which was Leo's suggestion. The fight scenes were only a page total in his script and they take up about half the movie. The Father character seems like a schizoid. They didn't have some shots with him saying his real lines, so they had to run with whatever he had said that was the least strange. They used the "YOU WHORE!" line.

They made me a copy of both the finished product and the collection of outtakes. I have a feeling that the outtakes are the real finished product.


	53. Chapter 53

Dear Diary,

Found a list I made when I first met them. I couldn't keep them straight and then as soon as I figured out who was who they would all take off their weapons and bandannas.

* * *

To keep turtles straight –

Blue – Leonardo

Red – Raphael

Orange – Michaelangelo

Purple – Donatello

* * *

Leonardo – the oldest

Bossy

Uses half Japanese words, can't understand most of the time

Talks like a samurai, lots of honor

No sense of humor

Bows at me a lot

* * *

Raphael – the loud one

Filthy mouth

Calls me "the human"

Scared of him

Yells a lot

Breaks my stuff

* * *

Michaelangelo – the little one

Really cute

Talks a lot

Needy

Lies a lot

Klepto

* * *

Donatello – the shy one

Uses big words

Hides from me

Talks about blowing stuff up

* * *

Oldest is possessive of the little one. Coddles him a lot.

Big one calls me "the girl" now. Might stop calling him the big one.

Raphael covered in scars. Still scared of him.

Oldest has lilty accent? Japanese affectation.

Raphael = Brooklyn

Haven't sussed the shy one yet.

Leonardo and Raphael almost obsessed with each other. Makes sense. They don't have friends.

All jumpy. Tend to go for weapons when the microwave goes off.

Use bathroom with door open.

Raphael walked in on me naked. Might be a pervert.

Shy one seems nice. Helps clean.

* * *

I am amazed at how much they've changed since then. At first all Leo would do was bow at me and talked to me through Raph and Mikey. Raph didn't talk to me if he could help and it and wouldn't use my name for at least a month. Viewed me as an outsider. Mikey was really cute and much more of a baby than he is now. Don was so shy at first. He used to hide in the next room and listen to me on the phone.

Maybe they didn't change much and I'm the one who really changed.


	54. Chapter 54

_Decided that I've been really short changing our Donny. I'm really reclusive like he is, so I don't know why I've been doing that. And for the record, I'm team Spike. Had some fun with Splinter for a change. I like him goofing around with his kids. It's so cute. Somebody pointed out that I've been allowing Mike to stay a baby too long and I agree. It had been on mind, but he's so cute and also I've been shunting him aside lately and ignoring him. So it gave me a fun challenge to approach that subject and got me thinking._

Dear Diary,

Interesting day. I was with the guys in one of the tunnels headed from my apartment to the lair. I was listening to Don talk about J. Robert Oppenheimer. I was the only one listening, although he was talking like he was trying to address the group at large.

Don was saying, "I really admire Oppenheimer in a way. He lobbied against a nuclear arms race. He knew it would happen. It wasn't exactly like they saw the Russians developing weapons and went, 'Whoa! How did that happen?'"

Leo said, "I think Angel was the best for Buffy. They had a strong relationship that was more than physical."

"What's wrong with a physical relationship?" Raph said.

"Oh, how would you know?" Mikey said. "I'm getting tired of you guys talking about sex all the time. You'd think you're both big time players. If anybody here is a player, it's me. You should come to me about sex advice."

Leo screwed up his face.

"What, is that a bad word now?" Mike said.

"Coming from you it is," Leo said.

"Plus, he gave a lot of money to liberal causes. The man was rich and he donated most of it to communist organizations. You know I have a skewed view of politics and I can see how that would appeal to a person at the time."

I just listened. I like listening to his scientific babbling. Unfortunately, his brothers do not.

"I guess you're right," Raph said. "It's just been on my mind because of that… thing that happened to Fearless. And Spike is best because he has cool hair. Enough said. And he rides a bike."

Leo primmed up his face and said, "Oh, of course it's my fault. Let's just drop it. Angel had a much clearer moral compass than Spike. Spike was obnoxious."

"Isn't anybody going to fight on the side of Riley?" Mikey asked.

"Guys?" Don asked over them.

"Riley? He left her after he prostituted himself to vamps. What's there to fight for? He left her and ran away to the jungle," Raph said. "If somebody left me for the jungle I would never forgive them."

"Why would any of us move to the jungle? To get a tan?" Leo asked laughing. "If you ever get a boyfriend and he leaves you to live in Central America because you find him paying vampires to drink his blood, then you can cry on my shoulder." He patted his shoulder and leaned at Raph. Raph pushed him into the sewer wall.

"Guys?"

Mikey said, "Why does Angel have such a strong moral compass? If they have sex he goes crazy and kills people."

"Guys, have you heard that famous quote by Oppenheimer?"

Leo slowed down a little to hear him better and asked vaguely, "What quote?"

"The one about Vishnu and the first successful atomic bomb test."

Mikey rolled his eyes and said, "Don, nobody cares."

Raph said, rather loudly, "Spike loved her the most! He got a soul for her! Angel just had one because he was punished for eating that stupid gypsy and he didn't want it. So Spike's better! And he has a cool leather jacket."

Then as his brothers turned a corner, Don kept going straight. So I followed him and caught his arm. I asked, "Where are you going?"

"Doesn't matter," he said. I couldn't see him very well, but I could tell that he was tearing up. "Not like anybody cares."

I didn't say anything. I should have but I couldn't think of anything in time.

"I know that they could care less about what I think, but… why do they have to just say it and make it so obvious."

"What? They care. They're just… awful teenage boys."

I really hate it when this one cries. He's so quiet and polite about it. "If I were like everybody else, I could go find other people to talk to about stuff I like. But I'm stuck here with them." Sniffling. Wiping his nose on his arm.

"Hey, do you want to come home with me? We can hang out for a while. Maybe watch 'Modern Marvels.'"

I think he really wanted to because he didn't answer right away and said, "No, I should get back home. They'll wonder if we don't show up soon. We said we would help clean so we can watch that… whatever stupid thing they're going to watch."

So we walked for a while in silence and then he stopped suddenly and said, "I don't know why they all want to leave so badly. I know they'll all leave someday. And I don't mind. I like it here and I'll gladly stay here and take care of Splinter after they've all moved on." I don't know why he was being so miserable today. Maybe he's still affected by the kittens and rats. Maybe somebody died on "The Puerile and the Fidgety" that he liked. Who knows. "No, that isn't true. I wouldn't be happy if they left me here. But I try to be satisfied. I try really hard to be good." That just broke my heart. "And it'll be hard when everybody's moved on. You'll get tired of us eventually."

I was really shocked by that. He stopped talking because I think he knew that he'd said too much. I said, "How can you even think that?"

"All we do is break your stuff, spend your money and get you kidnapped."

I just said, "You're my best friend, so don't say stuff like that." We didn't talk about it anymore and it feels like we should have, but it felt resolved at the moment. And it's true; he is my best friend.

He was still weepy and tried to hide his face as he ducked into his room. Mikey said, "Hey, Donny. What's up? Where you going? It's early. We were going to watch 'Night at the Museum.'"

"He isn't feeling good," I said. Well, it was sort of true. He was sad. That doesn't feel good.

Raph gave me a funny look. I'm sure he knew what was going on. Leo was in the kitchen with Splinter. They were doing this funny thing where Splinter went for a tea bag and Leo hid it when he wasn't looking. Splinter was looking for the tea bag and saying, "Now, I am the parent and you are the child. Where is my tea bag, you disobedient brat?" But he said it with a brilliant smile.

"Too much caffeine, Sensei. It's after 10pm."

Splinter found the tea bag and laid it next to his cup as he went to get some crackers. Leo put in the bread box. "I knew I should have sold you to those gypsies when I had the chance."

Leo stood back and watched patiently as Splinter looked for the tea bag and eventually found it. He stowed it in his pocket this time and gave Leo an affected little tisk. Then as soon as he turned his back, Leo pick pocketed him and stuck it in his katana holster.

I'm sure Splinter knew that he'd nicked it out of his pocket, but he pretended to be really shocked and appalled. He said, "You are nothing but a petty thief. April, you've been watching. Tell an old rat where he may find his tea bag."

They both looked at me and Leo was mouthing, "No!" behind his back.

I said, "I know better than to get between ninjas and their tea."

From the living room came, "It's in his katana thing!"

"Mikey!" Leo said, loudly.

Then Splinter was on him and wrestled him for the tea bag. That was pretty cool. Raph yelled, "No rough housing! Twenty flips, Sensei!"

Splinter worked Leo into a headlock and Leo was laughing and yelling in a funny high pitched voice, like he was being murdered. Mikey ran over and took advantage of the situation to tickle him under the arms.

"Such maturity," Raph said, shaking his head. He was staring blankly at the "Night at the Museum" DVD menu, waiting for us to be ready to watch.

"Stop it!" Leo said, out of breath. "Get the girl!"

So I screamed and ran towards the front door, but Mikey caught me because he was closest and then tormented me with tickling and then left me lying on the floor, laughing hysterically. I was in tears.

"Hey, we just killed our girl," Raph said, calmly. He hadn't gotten himself worked up in all the running around.

We settled down a mite and Splinter prepared snacks for the movie. Raph noticed and said, "You're gonna watch, Sensei?"

"Yes, I am, Raphael. Why? Are you surprised? I happen to enjoy Ben Still quite a bit."

Raph looked like he didn't know if he had really insulted Splinter or not or if he was being serious. He said, "Yeah, a little surprised."

"Can't an old rat enjoy a comedic movie?"

Mikey opened his eyes in a mock horrified expression and shook his head no.

Splinter came in the living room with the largest bowl of popcorn I've ever seen and said, "I also enjoy Jackie Chan."

Raph pretended to die of a heart attack and fell on his face on the floor. Splinter casually stepped over him to take his seat.

Leo invited Mikey to sit next to him but Mikey said, "No way. You'll just pinch me and blame it on Raph."

"I haven't done that in ages."

"You did that two months ago."

Leo was getting majorly annoyed that Mike wouldn't sit with him. "What's the matter? Too good for me?"

Mike was sitting in a chair by himself. "I'm perfectly happy over here without you."

"Oh, burn," Raph mumbled.

We watched about ten minutes of the movie and Leo kept looking over at Mikey, who was reading a book and ignoring the movie. "I thought you wanted to watch this movie."

"I've seen it already."

I broke up their debate to yell, "Raph, shut the bathroom door!"

Leo said, "Mike, don't you want popcorn?"

"No."

At first I couldn't figure out what was bothering Leo. Mike didn't want to sit by him. What's the big deal?

Leo asked him, "What are you reading?"

Didn't answer. Then he got up and went in the bedroom. Didn't see him the rest of the night. That was odd.

After a few minutes, Leo said to Raph, "Remember when he was really small and did everything we said and was so cute and had a lisp. I liked him a lot better then."

"Lisp?" I asked. I'd never heard that before.

Raph had the bowl of popcorn in his lap. Splinter reached for a handful and he pulled it away, like he wouldn't let him have any. "Yeah, he used to go, 'Waphie, twit it!'"

So I think I see the issue now. Mikey is Leo's baby and kind of always will be. Even when he's forty and living the hardened life of a solitary ninja, fighting the world alone and all that. Leo will only see a gappy toothed kid saying, "Leo, twit it! Thop pinching me!" I guess Leo isn't quite ready to give that up yet. Raph is definitely happy that the baby phase seems to be cutting in and out now. Don doesn't care either way, as far as I can tell. But every time Mike acts more like the rest of them, Leo looks at him like he's really surprised and doesn't know what to do. Mike the adult isn't in his mental landscape yet. And it's not like he's being super mature or anything. He still tries to hug them goodnight. All but Raph. But he doesn't try to kiss Raph now and I haven't seen him whine in at least a week. That's got to be progress for him.

I have this sneaking and rather awful suspicion that pretty soon we'll just wake up and Mike will be different and we'll wonder where our baby went. So I think we need to savor him while we still have him, because that day is coming soon. Like in the next few months, soon.

Don didn't come out the rest of the night. Before I went home, I went in his room to say goodbye to him. He was asleep, but I sat with him for a minute anyway.


	55. Chapter 55

_Somebody asked about Leo being sick. So here's Leo sick._

Dear Diary,

So I want Raph to take me to the eye doctor. He wasn't answering his phone and I called him and left him a voice message that sounded something like, "Raph, where the hell are you? I need you take me to the eye doctor tomorrow. I called you about it three days ago and haven't heard a word about it. If you don't do it and Mikey has to take me, then I'll play Mariah Carey whenever you're here."

He called back an hour later and said he was in some kind of delicate negotiations with unnamed parties, but he would certainly be happy to take me tomorrow.

Leo's sick and so not driving me. He wanted to, but I had to yell at him and tell him that he couldn't walk to the bathroom without passing out, so no thanks. And Don drives like a lunatic. He races trains and stuff. Mikey never knows where he is and panics when people get in his lane without signaling.

And Leo's been sleeping on my couch for two days because the disease struck during movie night and he was too sick to go home. He wanted to, but Raph threatened to knock him out if he followed them. Mikey comes over a few times a day to check on him and to threaten to call Raph if he doesn't quit trying to get up all the time. He has a fever of 104F and he's fairly delirious.

Last night I sat with his feet in my lap because he's too sick to sit up and watched a chick flick with him. He was crying loudly by the end and he said, "That's so beautiful. He loves her anyway. Oh, I'm going to hurl."

Every time he goes to the bathroom I find him on the floor on his face in the kitchen. He seems to be driven to wash the dishes. Like he can't pass a sink of dirty dishes without trying to wash them, even if he's too sick to stand.

He uses this foggy voice, like he doesn't know what's going on. Don just called and asked to talk to him. I put it on speaker phone because I don't want him to touch my phone, like I won't certainly get sick just from being around him anyway. But Don says, "How you feeling, sweetheart?"

"Who's this?" he asked. I think the "sweetheart" threw him off.

Annoyed sigh. "This is Don, dumbass."

So he went from sweetheart to dumbass in two sentences. Impressive.

"I think I'm dying," he said. "But I'm fine."

I don't know what I'm supposed to let him eat. He won't let me give him the Carnation instant breakfast that Mikey made me buy for him and wants to eat whatever I make for myself so that he doesn't put me out, which doesn't make any sense because the instant breakfasts are instant and all. So he's still throwing up a lot. I mean a lot. Like every two hours. It smells like… bad.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just got back from the eye doctor. Found the only eye doctor with evening hours so that Raph could drive at night. He's a good driver. So is Leo, but he was busy back at my apartment passing out all over the place.

Whenever Raph drives, I guarantee you that he'll say, "Only one shade of green, people," to somebody sitting at a green light.

He isn't exactly an angry driver. He's a good driver and he knows it and likes to talk to the other drivers like they can hear him. "Stay over there, friend. Not your turn. Sure, I'll let you in. I'll pretend to be nice. Why are all these people in the street? Get moving." He'd actually make a good cop. If he were human, I guess. Or a good convict. Not sure which.

Got done at the eye doctor and ran into a lamp post on the way back to the van because those stupid drops they put in your eyes make me blind. He was still in the driver's seat after all that time and he was talking to Mike on the phone and saying, "Well, if he doesn't want to stay put then knock him out."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo keeps walking around at night and crashing into stuff and waking me up. I asked Don and Mike if he's really seriously sick and they said he only gets sick every few years and when he is, then it's a doozy. He'll be better in a week or two.

I forced him to sleep in the bed, so I could lock him in with me and keep him from walking into things in a fugue state. He keeps thinking he's in the lair. Now he's lying on the other side of the bed, shivering and sweating.

Wondering if it's a bad idea to lock a delusional ninja in my bedroom with me. Especially one with particularly loose gastrointestinal problems.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just woke up screaming. Put him back to bed. Had to pet him for a while and tell him he was okay. He was confused because he wasn't in his own bed.

* * *

Dear Diary,

He keeps walking around the bedroom and trying to get out, but he's too confused and can't unlock the door. Not sure if he's awake or not.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Called Mike and told him to get over here and control him. Raph's too rough with him and he doesn't listen to Don very well. Listens to his baby.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Thank goodness. Mikey just came and ordered him back into bed and he blindly obeyed. I let Mike have my bed and slept on the couch to get away from them.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mike left in the night after Leo went to sleep. Leo had an attack of dry heaves this morning. Nothing left in his stomach.

Fever is 103 now. Sent for Doc Don to come and look at him. Just said, "Yeah, fever went down a little. Just give him more Powerade. Hey, I found those spark plugs that I thought I lost." His compassion was truly touching.

Leo's in a really pathetic state today. Too exhausted to even try to walk into the furniture and pass out. Just sat on the couch with me all day, all curled up against me under a blanket with a really pained expression. Shivering a lot now that the fever's going away. I'm getting kind of hot because I'm trapped under him and he's hot and wet and there's a blanket. Might try to get out from under him. Boy, he smells.

Got out and when I sat back down he maneuvered back somehow. What a boring day. Trapped under a diseased ninja.

Finally, around 6pm, he opened his eyes and looked around and said, "Where's everybody?" Realized he was kind of laying on me and went, "Sorry. Ugh, I can't move though. Just push me away."

So I rolled him onto the other side of the couch and he went back to sleep and he's been there ever since, sound asleep. Looks like he's dead.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo's doing infinitely better today. Weighed himself and must have lost what little body fat he had to start with.

Apologized infinitely for throwing up on my bed and on the living room carpet. Pretty embarrassed. Wants to start training again, but Splinter has forbidden it until he's back to his normal weight.


	56. Chapter 56

_I don't know why I had this awful idea. I suppose it's from watching too many Cold Case Files episodes. Plus, I was an anthropology major and so gruesome crime scene stuff isn't that shocking to me. Realizing that I left some stuff hanging that I'd like to resolve before we do anything else fun. Got pretty gory with this one. Just watched Kill Bill vol. 1 and a special about BTK so that might have something to do with it._

Dear Diary,

Overheard a Leo/ Raph heart-to-heart moment. Raph was saying, "You know, I don't like you all that much. But I don't want you dying or anything. It would really throw off our sparring."

Don asked me for some Tylenol today and I forgot to tell him if I had any and then he was really wired and it turned out he'd taken three Midol and drank four Pepsi's. So he was like a guy on crack. He was running around going, "We need to get out of here! Go for a ride! But it's daytime! Aw. Let's go on the roof and play football!"

Mikey speculated that he'll grow breasts and ovaries.

Another funny exchange. Leo and Don were at the table eating cereal this morning. Don looks at Leo and goes, "Oh, Leo. That was cute."

Leo was confused and goes, "What was cute?"

"That thing you just did. Do it again."

"I don't know what I just did, so I can't replicate it. Sorry."

Raph goes, "Was it like this?" Crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue.

Mikey gushes, "Oh, Raphie! That was adorable! Do it again!"

Laughing from all parties. I could listen to those four talk all day.

* * *

April is too upset to write in her journal at this moment. I thought I should make an entry to mark down the date of the occurrence. Michelangelo seems to be recovering well.

Leonardo

* * *

Dear Diary,

I don't know why Leo wrote that since I don't write dates in this thing. I guess he needed something to do.

We're all trying to take care of poor Mikey. He's doing a lot better, but it was touch and go for a while. He's gotten to the point where he keeps reminding us of what happened, batting his eyes, and asking for favors from his sick bed. So he's fine, I guess. Raph took off. Typical. He's looking for the guy. I wish he hadn't looked in that bag. He's going to be scarred for life. He took all the pictures and Don found them hidden in his room after he left. I don't know if he's equipped to deal with this kind of thing. Don tried hard not to look at them because he figured out what they were. I don't think Raph was smart enough to do the same thing. Won't answer his phone.

I'll describe it as briefly as I can. Don thinks it'll do me some good to write about it. He wants to see if I can remember anything helpful.

Three days ago I had to stay at school rather late because I had to write a research paper that encompassed the entire history of everything. It felt like that anyway. That professor thinks that it's cute to purposefully give us misleading and vague information because, "In the real world, nothing will be clear when you do research. And you'll work for stupid, lazy people." Just like the ones that teach my classes, huh? Guess I'll be used to it when I join the workforce then.

When I got home, I opened the front door and I could tell somebody was there. Didn't pay attention much because people jump in and out of the window all the time now. But the lights were all off and that seemed strange. That usually means that Raph's there angsting about something.

"I'm not in the mood to deal with whatever it is, Raph," I said.

But it didn't seem right. I knew it wasn't Raph. Too tall. I thought for a second that it was Leo, but it wasn't right. Then I realized that this was a strange man, standing in my apartment in the dark and in the middle of the night. He had something in his hand, but I couldn't see what it was and wasn't too eager to find out. So I tried to leave out the door again. I didn't panic and run away. My brain hadn't worked hard enough for me to be that worried yet. They always show girls in movies instantly screaming and running around. I think my body was telling me that if I obeyed and was quiet that I would be okay. Which doesn't make much sense, but there you go.

The guy slammed the door before I could get out and I stood there for a second, trying to figure out where to go. I stumbled away into the living room. I didn't run away. My brain wasn't working fast enough for that.

Anyway, he knocked me down and tied me up. I think the last time I was tied up was when Raph tied me up. No, that's not right. Gina Basso tied me up. So did Crazy Hades Doctor. I get tied up a lot. I didn't find any fight until I realized that I was about to get raped and that I was alone. I think I made some noise, but I don't really remember what happened too clearly. There was a lot of chaos for a while. Don's pissed about it. That I don't remember that well. If it was him getting held down and pawed by a strange man, maybe he'd block it out too. He's a male ninja, so I don't think that's a proper comparison.

I was thinking something like, "It's all over. I'm so going to be a statistic," when somebody came out of my bedroom.

It was Mikey. He was asleep in my room and I have never been happier to see him. But things didn't go like you would think they would have. I thoroughly expected Mike to just ninja kick the bastard in the head and knock him out and untie me. But the guy was clicking that thing in his hand and Mike jumped aside at the last minute, as he realized that it was a tazer. But it was one of those tazers with the leads that jump out. And he shot the things at him and they grabbed into his skin and he dropped like a sack of stones. You'd think that would have knocked Mikey out and he'd be twitching and stuff, but he was still conscious and partly mobile and grabbed the guy's feet and knocked him over. But I don't think he could stand up because he climbed on his chest and I couldn't see what he was doing at first, but he was strangling him with one hand and punching him with the other. Guess his legs didn't work and he said he'd left his weapons in the bedroom.

To make a long and awful story short, the guy pulled out a knife and stuck Mikey in stomach. Our baby is tough. Even that didn't stop him and he kept wrestling with him for a long time until the guy weaseled free and ran away out the front door.

I'm so impressed with him. He was tazed and stabbed and beat up and still had the energy to use the knife to cut my arms free and ordered me to call somebody. That means call Leo.

"Who was that guy?" he asked. I was holding a towel over his stomach and he still wanted to talk conversationally while his legs twitched and he bled from his stab wound.

"I don't know." His face was covered with a ski mask, but I hadn't registered that before.

"I'll have a sexy scar," he said vaguely. "Did he hurt you?"

I hadn't taken inventory of myself yet. He'd batted me around and ripped my shirt up, but other than that I was fine. "No, thanks to you."

The others were over in no time and I fully expected Raph to rampage around the room, but he turned on the light and went to the kitchen to help Don sterilize his suture kit or something. I don't know what they were doing exactly. It was something medical. Scrubbing up, I guess.

Leo was hovering and fussing over us and Mikey said, with a big smile, "Dude! I got tazed!"

"That's a new one," Leo said, trying to return his gallows' humor.

"Does it look deep?" Raph yelled from the kitchen.

Leo bent down and pulled the skin apart to look inside the wound. Mikey screamed and said, "That fucking hurts! Stop!"

"Not that bad. Not good, but not too bad. I don't think it hit anything important."

"All of me is important," Mikey said in a really childish voice. Leo patted him on the head.

I won't describe the stitching up because I had to go away in the bathroom and not look at it. But he was drugged a'plenty when I came back.

Then Raph found that blasted bag. A black duffle bag. It was on the couch. He said, "Is this yours?" And opened it up without waiting for me to answer. I said, no, I hadn't seen it before. His brothers were too busy to notice and were helping lift Mikey so they could get him up. Don wanted to move him back home.

Raph stayed behind so he could rummage in the bag. He looked like he was hypnotized by the contents and I was afraid that there was a body part inside. He asked, "You alright?" without looking away from the bag.

"I don't know." I was shaking all over. "I guess. I'm not tazered or stabbed so I'm okay."

"Right…" He pulled something out and said, "Know what this is?"

Shook my head no.

"Clothesline. Duct tape. Other stuff." Kind of dodgy. Zipped up the bag.

"What other stuff?" Didn't really want to know. Didn't want him knowing.

"Want to come back to the lair?" That was an order.

So I followed him back and he carried the bag. When we got back, he took it to his room and I didn't remember seeing it after that. I forgot about it because Mikey's wound was oozing and Don wanted help fixing the stitches because they tore on the move.

Heard Mikey talking to Leo. I think he was juiced up with Morphine. I went into the lab and he was lying on the infirmary bed with this blissfully idiotic smile and saying to Leo, who was holding his hand and listening politely, "I got attacked by a rapist. Can I have some ice cream?"

"Not now. Just rest."

"Cool. Is April unraped?"

I stepped forward so he could see me and said, "Yeah, you saved me. You're my hero."

"Read me a story, Leo."

Leo was looking uncomfortable with the whole handholding thing and gladly pulled away. He picked up the first book he saw, which was that thick law book and read, "Liability of golf course owners for golf balls shot on the course. An owner of a golf course is generally not liable for injuries sustained by patrons in the normal course of the game. It is understood that there is some danger inherent in the game itself…"

Don said, "Well, that's interesting."

Mikey giggled and said, "Leo, you're so silly. I'm going to take a nap now. Can I have a bike?"

Then he fell asleep.

* * *

Dear Diary,

A few days later, when Mikey was hobbling around again, I asked Don if he found any clues in the bag. He hadn't heard anything about it. So we went to Raph's room to look for it. It was hidden in the closet under a bunch of Raph and Mikey's junk. Don poked around inside and swallowed really hard. I didn't look in the bag because he told me not to and said it was a "crime kit" and I think he really means a "rape kit." Whatever it was, it was so disturbing that he locked it up in the lab.

"Wonder why Raph had it hidden in his room," I said. I was getting a really bad feeling about it.

"Probably the same reason that I just locked it up," Don said.

Mikey was rummaging in his room later in the day for something trivial and yelled in a laughing voice, "Hey, Don. Where'd Raph get these pictures of naked ladies? They're real pictures. Not from a magazine."

Don was in the bedroom in a matter seconds and snatched the picture out of Mikey's hand and then searched the room again. There was a pile of pictures stuffed under Raph's mattress. Thankfully, Mike didn't get a clear look at them because he never would have slept again.

Don and Leo had a little powwow over them and it was concluded that they were pictures from the duffle bag and that the guy… you know… took pictures… I don't think I need to explain much else. Still major concern over why Raph was hoarding them. Leo thinks he was meditating on revenge. Like counting all the girls in the pictures and their injuries so he could bring them up when he found the guy or something. One of those ninja vengeance trips.

It still bothers me a lot that he would rather sit alone in his room studying these things by himself than show them to us all so that we can figure out what to do with it. But that's our boy. He always thinks he has to carry all the weight by himself.

Mikey's been acting like the little hero and getting on our nerves and asking for favors and stuff. But then I remembered how he wrestled that guy to the ground when his legs didn't work and he didn't have weapons. It was time for him to wash the dishes and he whined, "Can somebody else do it? It hurts to stand." Cute face.

I wondered how it could hurt his delicate self so much when he beat up a guy while he was both stabbed and tazed the other day, but I just went along with it and did the dishes for him.

We had a little meeting so that Leo could drill Mikey on anything he remembered that might help us catch the guy. He said, "Well, he was human…"

Don rolled his eyes and went to his computer, assuming that Mike wasn't going to tell us anything helpful.

"And he'll have a really lovely bruise around his neck from where I was choking him and I'm pretty sure I broke his arm when I took his knife away. Can I play Halo now?"

"No, how tall was he?"

Scratched his head. "Don't remember. I was laying on top of him most of the time. But he was taller than me."

I said, "Yeah, taller than all four of you. Pretty tall, actually. Big guy."

Don was typing kind of frantically and said, "All bow down to my genius."

Nobody bowed down. Leo demanded, "What?"

"A guy came in to the emergency room three days ago with a broken left arm and strangulation marks on his neck. Guy's name was Gerald Hogg. Nice name, pal. Here's an address."

Leo copied down the address and would have taken off then and there if I hadn't demanded to go with him. He protested and gave me some paternalistic argument about how the woman could get hurt and I said that I would be fine if I was with him. Plus, I wanted to see the guy for myself. I was the one he tried to attack. He wasn't thrilled and told me to stay behind him at all times and all that stuff and then we took off.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Another break to get something to drink. So I went with Leo to the address and he ninja-ed his way into the house. I had to wait on the sidewalk and knock on the front step and wait for him to unlock the front door and pretend like I'd been let inside by the occupant.

I followed Leo to the living room and found… ugh… I hate ninjas.

Leo said, "Somebody had fun here." Fun is a word you could use I guess.

Gerald Hogg was tied to a chair in the middle of the room with his guts all hanging out and his throat cut. It was hard to tell what had been cut at first because his front was all blood. I had to turn around. Leo just looked around the room casually.

"Why?" He didn't hear what I said at first because my hands were over my face. The room was starting to smell like old hamburger.

"There's a note pinned to his shirt that says 'Nissa Hopkins' and it's Butch's handwriting." He doesn't call him Butch that much. Usually when he's worried.

I can't say that I understood what that meant. Took me the whole ride back home to put it together. One of the pictures in the bag must have been of that Nissa Hopkins woman that Leo found in the dumpster.

"Doesn't seem very sporting of him to tie the guy up and then butcher him," I said. I don't like these unpleasant reminders that he can be a brutal killer.

"It's sporting to him," Leo said. He was driving. "All those girls were tied up."

So we got home and had to tell Mike and Don that the guy had been chopped up and Mikey said, "Serves him right. He would have gutted me like a fish if I weren't so much stronger than him." Always modest.

Don was really upset. "Gutted? Like in guts out of the body?"

"Like you've never seen that before?" Mikey rolled his eyes. He was drinking a juice box and playing a video game.

"I hate this ninja vengeance stuff. This was a crime. It should have been dealt with by the authorities."

Leo said, "It was a crime against us and our clan…"

There was a long debate over the American justice system versus the Hamato clan honor system and I blocked most of it out. I cuddled with Mikey under the blanket trying to block out the image of that guy.

Raph isn't home yet. I have a feeling that things will get really weird when he does get back. Leo seems to be condoning his vengeance and I have a feeling that he would have done it himself if he'd known about it. Mikey doesn't care either way. Don's really unhappy. He keeps a tally of their body count and likes to wave it under Leo's nose once and a while.


	57. Chapter 57

_Heard Patrick Swayze on the radio today and missed him and came up with this little idea. Lot of dialog in this one._

Dear Diary,

Just sitting here thinking that the closest thing I'll have to a boyfriend is an awkward teenage mutant who baked me a cake because he felt weird for mutilating a guy on my behalf. Ah, romance.

And, by the way, Mikey asked him if he used dirt instead of brown sugar.

I went to the lair yesterday. Heard one of those things that I have to pretend that I didn't heard although they all know that I did. It's universal knowledge that whenever Don and Raph end up in the bathroom together, they'll sing some kind of epic duet and keep trying to outdo each other until somebody knocks on the door and kicks them out. This time it was "She's Like the Wind." They were singing in harmony and everything. It's kind of like vocal sparring. I've been told that Don tends to start songs that are really romantic because sometimes Raph refused to follow through if the lyrics get too sappy. And the reverse with Raph. He picks songs with nasty lyrics, knowing that Don tries not to swear. Mikey had the TV turned up really loud to block it out. I had to stand right next to the door to hear. Leo was with me making a face like he was listening to two toddlers playing.

After "The Donny and Butch Show" ended they got down to some ninja business. It started off a really cool and bizarre adventure for the five of us. I overheard Don saying to Leo, "I think I need more money. She charges extra for special services."

Leo called Raph over and demanded money. Raph said he wanted to go too if his money was involved.

Don said, "No way. She hates you two."

I seriously thought Don was going to pick up a hooker. Then he said, "I think she'll respond to pretty better. April. Mikey. Come on."

But Leo and Raph demanded to go too.

They wouldn't explain to me what we were doing, but it had something to do with information on that Super Strong Ninja Dude that they fought a few months earlier. Johnny No Thumbs has lots of contacts and sometimes they go to this woman for information.

The lady's name is Queen Marie Landau, or that's what she calls herself anyway. She lives in a busted up house and has a bunch of guard dogs. As I was about to ring the doorbell Raph said, "Remember, don't look the Doberman in the eye. It'll go crazy."

Then I went up the walk and the dogs were all smelling my crotch and it was hard to see which was a Doberman and to walk a straight line without looking at them. I got to the door and there was a sign that read Queen's Psychic Readings, Open. Okay. How do I describe Queen Marie? Raph said she's a Polish woman who moved to New Orleans to go to Louisiana State University and converted to voodoo and then moved back to NYU. But she's kind of a hybrid of New Orleans voodoo and other occult junk. She usually has information on underworld people when they it and sometimes she can divine information. Leo and Mikey are much more interested in her powers of divination. Raph and Don consider it total bunk, which is funny because their own father has proven psychic abilities.

She opened the door and said in this kind of foggy voice, "Hello, daughter. What do you need?" The house looked dark and cluttered inside and I didn't really want to go in. I said, "I'm here with the turtles. They're going to break into your house in a minute and wanted you to have a heads up."

"Oh, well that was nice of them," she said with a distinctly annoyed voice. "I'm glad they warned me this time. Last time, Damian nearly bit that little one in his surprise."

I assume Damian is the Doberman and the little one is Mikey. She let me in and they were all sitting around the living room by the time we got there. Mikey was hovering suspiciously near the shelves full of jars of creepy stuff and I realized that he would have something weird when we got home. He had a bug eyed expression, like I nearly caught him.

Don was standing in defense posture with his hands under his armpits and his shoulders hunched.

Raph dumped himself on the couch without any invitation from Queen Marie and sat with his legs wide apart, like he usually sits. He tries to take up as much room as possible. The Doberman approached him and he kicked it away. He retreated to Leo who petted him and tamed wild beast with his perfection or something. Then it growled at Mikey.

"We need information, Marie," Leo said, immediately jumping into business.

Marie pointed to me and asked, "Who is this female?"

"I'm April," I said and held out my hand. I decided to ignore the fact that she talked about me like I was their maidservant.

She shook my hand and said, "I am not pleased to see the two oldest. I can smell the blood on your hands."

Raph smelled his hands self-consciously.

"What information do you seek, Death Giver?" she asked Leo. I'm going to call him that from now on. Has a nice ring to it.

"There is a new ninja in town. He is called The Giant by his colleagues and he is feared amongst all ninja…" Leo went on and on about this for a while and I blocked most of it out. Contained some honor and references to wrongs done to his clan by the Shredder. Some talk about past fights with the guy. Blah blah blah. Mikey found a live snake in a cage and was trying to pick it up without being noticed. He gave me a cute smile and put it down when he realized that he'd been caught.

Queen Marie said, "I feel that I must read your futures before I can give you any information. Your fates are intertwined…"

"You don't have anything on him, do you?" Raph said, cutting into her mystical spiel.

"Nothing," she said. "But like I said, there is a thread to follow. Since you have spoken first, I will read your future first. What is your name again?"

He didn't move and said, "Jason."

"His name is Raphael Hamato, ma'am," Leo said politely.

Raph kicked Leo in the ankle.

"Come sit with me, Raphael Hamato, and I will tell you what you need to know."

Really loud sigh. Took his sweet time getting across the room and then lounged back on the floor while she sat up really straight. She did something funky with a piece of quartz. She held it over his head from a string and let it swing in a circle a few times. Don whispered to me that it was counter clockwise so it was a boy. Then she lit some twigs on fire and threw some bones with writing on them around on the floor and read them going, "Mmm, hmm. Huh. Interesting." And stuff like that.

Then she looked up at him and he had lost interest by then and was watching Mikey trying to pick up the snake again. She started off by saying, "Your future is uncertain. It is clouded by your impetuous choices. You are consumed with love and if you had the chance, you could be a passionate and satisfying lover."

He made a silly face at Leo to show how seriously he was taking this.

Apparently, his undiscovered talent as a lover wasn't enough to stop her from hating him and said, "You are nothing but a sack of death. The corpses that you have made are your children. The little the graves of…"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm a killer. Moving on."

"You are full of fear…"

He was getting understandably fed up with her, held out his hand to her and said, "Give me my money back."

She went on and said, "You fear you are an animal. Less human than your brothers. You kill for pleasure."

Leo thought this was a bad path to follow and said, "I don't think this is helping at all. Could we move on? Maybe you should read one of us?"

She brushed Raph away and motioned grimly to Leo. He sat down very nicely, sitting up all straight. She did her same spell or whatever it was and said, "I see a long absence and the bonds of brotherhood will be broken…"

Don was thumb wrestling Raph. Apparently, they were really intrigued. She carried on about how he's full of death and everything and stuff about the blood on his hands will never wash off. He looked upset by that and I was getting mad at her. She finally came up with some stuff about the ninja. She ended his reading and said, "Now please tell the little one to leave the snake alone and to put back the jar of chicken's feet that he took. You! The one in the purple! I will read you now."

"Um. No thanks. I just had a psychic reading before I left home. I'm… full…"

Mikey put the jar down near the tank. He said, "Hey, read me!"

"I am closed now," she said, with an evil tone. Guess now she hates Mikey. She was a little kinder to Raph because the spirit world told her that he's good in bed and she told him to come by whenever he needed anything.

On the way home Leo made some plans about catching ninja guy because that was the goal of the whole weird trip and then Don said, "That Queen Marie wants to lay your eggs, Raph."

Leo ignored the interruption and kept blathering about ninja entrapment strategies. His speech didn't have the usual effect because Mikey was making kissy noises at Raph through the whole thing.

I got tired of the teasing pretty quickly and so did Don. Mikey, Leo and Raph were going to spar. I think they were going to rough house, but they were going to call it sparring when they got home. Don wasn't interesting and we off together. It's nice to get off alone with him sometimes.

He wanted to go loot the docks, but I didn't feel like it. Kind of have cramps. So we went home to watch Disney Pixar movies. I opened the fridge to make him a sandwich and he pointed at the beer and said, "Why don't we have those?"

I was really surprised. He's barely drank before. Like once. And it was barely anything. So I said, "Are you sure? Leo doesn't like you and Mikey to drink."

"Oh, why not? We're all the same age. And I'm a really logical person. I can't be afraid of it. I'll be brave."

I thought, cigarettes. But didn't say anything. He's almost an adult. So I handed him one and he took a drink and made an awful face and said, "That tastes foul."

He's so cute. He's cuter than Mikey because he doesn't try. He watched "Toy Story" with me and kept taking a drink and then making faces and going, "Blech. Ugh!" But he kept going. "I don't think people drink this for the flavor."

He didn't get drunk. He was a little buzzed though. "I'm so glad you're okay," he said after a while. "I wish people would leave us alone and stop trying to kill us all the time. What have we ever done to them? We just want to be left alone."

"Yeah, you can't walk down the street without tripping over a vengeance driven ninja nowadays."

He took a few drinks and said, "Blech. Yuck. I don't like drinking. I'm kind happier than usual, but I'm feeling really stupid and I like my brain the way it is. I mean, I think I'm being stupid, but I don't notice. Does that make sense?"

"Yup. But you don't look stupid."

Don said, "It didn't take a ninja to try to hurt you though. This was some pervert from the general population. It's not just our world that isn't safe. Nothing is safe. I wish we could all move to an island in the pacific. With lots of sun because Mikey likes the sun. That would be cool for him. And there would be lots of tropical fish we could watch. And we would be alone. Or else with only nice people who didn't want to kill any of us." He was being unspeakably adorable. "And you would be there too and you could have your own house. It would be a really secure house that wouldn't blow away in a monsoon and you'd wear a sarong like Dorothy L'Amour. And Leo could have a nice dojo and he wouldn't be so uptight because he could just relax because nobody would be out to get us. And Raph… he might go crazy though. He needs people. That's his problem. He hates people, but he needs them. Or something. Maybe he's just nuts. Splinter would like it there. But he'd get hot because of his fur."

He put down the beer and said to the floor, "I don't like Raph sometimes."

Didn't know what to say. I said, "Yeah, you like him. You two get along."

"I know we get along. I worry about the stuff he does. He said he cut the guy's throat and watched him bleed out. Then he cut out his guts for fun after."

Okay, that made me sick.

"And Leo was like, 'Well, done, grasshopper. You have avenged our clan.'" He imitated Leo's voice and body language very well. Almost made me laugh. But not quite. "He literally did the same thing that the guy had been doing to other people and it bugs me that any of us are capable of it and that Leo condones it. I don't say anything because Raph and Mikey would say that I fight on the side of rapists or something. But something about it feels wrong."

We talked about something else for a while because he gets into talking moods a lot. I think shy people are like that. He's like a failed extrovert. After a while he asked, "Is that what it was like when Raph attacked you? Like what happened with that Hogg guy?"

I didn't understand why he would even think that and said, "It was totally different. Raph wouldn't ever do that."

"What wouldn't he do?" He looked mad. "Mutilate corpses for fun?"

I think Don has a valid point and it's one that we all like to ignore. "It was different. I know Raph and I knew that something was wrong with him. So mostly I was worried. It wasn't the same kind of fear, I guess. I knew that Raph wouldn't…" I didn't finish because he got the point. "Let's talk about something else."

He perked up as he lit on a more favorable subject. "What did you think when Mikey kept trying to steal the snake? And how much would you bet that there will be a snake in Raph's bed tonight?"

Don's prediction about the snake was off. He found a jar of dead beetles in his bed. Mikey said that they had been gathered under the light of a full moon and the jar had been rubbed against a black cat, so he should be grateful. Leo said that since his reputation as a great lover will be out soon, he should get rid of the bugs before the women see them. Raph expressed his differing point of view by punching Mikey in the face, calling Leo an unrepeatable name and then sleeping on the couch with a flash light.

Don told me the whole thing while hiding in the lab and told me he's going to name our island Donistan and now Mikey, Leo and Raph are all banished and only me, Don and Splinter can live there.


	58. Chapter 58

_I remember hearing a story a long time back about a party where something similar happened. Only it was a dead body in a van in an orchard. Some college guys found it and instead of reporting it to police, they had a few keg parties next to it and they all kept looking inside the van for entertainment at the dead guy. Also, my friend is a nurse and told me the story of this scenario as it plays out here, only it was a guy with alcohol poisoning and he wasn't as lucky as our hero. I did this awhile ago and held on to it for a while._

Dear Diary,

So Raph and Leo had a really odd fight. Leo ate something that Raph had cooked for himself and left in the fridge and then Raph cracked him on the head with a full 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. Don't ask. Then Raph declared that he was leaving for good. Nobody said anything or even noticed. He says that a lot.

An hour later he announced that he was moving in with Skeezy Pete. Pete owes him over $5000 and he said he would knock his rent off his tab. Splinter is mad about the stupid fight and Leo keeps rubbing his head dramatically, even though it didn't hurt him. Splinter is mostly amused at the idea of Raph trying to get along with other people well enough to live with them. He and Don were chuckling and giggling at each other over the idea. Mikey helped out by saying, "Can I have your bed now that you're moving out? You broke mine. I think it's only fair."

And it gets even better. Gentry is there on a month's long visitation. Don helped him move some of his stuff over there. I don't know where he'll sleep. That crappy apartment is really small.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Went to visit Raph at the Harris apartment. I'm still trying not to choke from laughing so much.

Leo went with me to scowl and lecture and stuff. Gentry answered the door and he reverted back to an awkward teenager and leered backwards. He seems to alternate between that and smooth ladies man lately.

"Leo!" she said, reaching out the grab him like a bird of prey.

He scurried inside and then yelled, "RAPH!" Looking for his security object.

Gentry nearly slammed the door in my face.

Raph was on the couch, reading to one of the toddlers. Turns out Pete was more than happy to have Raph there because he needed somebody to babysit his kids while he was at work. He can't rely on Gentry sticking around. She tends to take off.

Raph saw us and nearly dumped the kid on the floor. He looked like he was about to hug Leo, but then he looked shrewd and said, "Hey, Fearless. Come to take some vengeance on me? There's a Mountain Dew bottle in the kitchen."

"I'm not that immature," Leo said. "Even if you are a big jerk!" Real mature, Fearless.

Gentry was in second heaven. Both of her lust objects in the same room, yelling at each other. You could cut the angsty teenage testosterone with a knife.

I turned to Gentry and said, "So how have things been having Raph in the house?"

She twirled her hair and said, all the time eyeballing Leo, "It's great. He's cool to hang out with."

Leo had Raph in a headlock and was saying, "Say you're sorry!"

Things didn't go that well on this visit. Gentry said to Leo that she would call him as he went out the door, but he didn't seem to hear her.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph sent me this Facebook message today:

Subject: gentry

_ She keeps trying to get me to kiss her and stuff? What should I do and she has a dance that she wants me to go to I don't want to go to a fucking dance and these kids are all over me I hate them and skeez got me smoking again_

So I sent this back:

_ What do you mean what do you do? Need me to draw you a diagram? And you know, going to a high school dance would kind of get in the way of ninja secrecy and all. Tell Skeeze that he needs to get somebody else to watch the kids if it bugs you that much. Or maybe Mikey can come over and help. Don't smoke. Knock it off._

Raph sends back:

_ Trying to quit not working. Don't send mike I can do it myself_

_

* * *

_

Dear Diary,

Don't know what to think of this. Gentry was out and Raph was at home with about six kids because Skeeze gets visitation with a bunch of his kids on the same night. Raph was drinking a beer and smoking and trying to manage all of those kids at the same time. He had them watching a movie. Said he'd been having them watch TV all day and he was going to hear Winnie the Pooh in his nightmares. Plus, he had to cook meals for them and thankfully that eight year old girl is pretty cool and helps him out. Saje is her name.

I snuck in and there was the unmistakable sound of kiddy music in the living room. Raph was in the kitchen, tending stuff on the stove, with a cigarette in his mouth. Saje was in her Disney princess dress again and he told her, "Get me the salt."

She moved a little stool over to the almost bare pantry and looked on the high shelves. "There ain't no salt, Raphie."

"Aw, damn."

I said, "Need me to get some?"

I expected him to jump, but I guess he knew I was there already. He said, "Yeah, you might have to go buy the whole fucking meal. What does this look like to you?" He stepped back and let me look in his pots.

"Looks like garbage," I said. "Where's Gentry?"

Raph avoided me as he tapped his cigarette ashes into an empty tuna can. Saje giggled. Something was up.

"Where… is… Gentry?"

One of the little kids came in the kitchen in his footed pajamas and whined, "Raphie, I'm hungry!"

"Yeah, I know," he said. He picked the kid up and held him as he stirred his sludge. "So am I."

I called for some pizzas. "If I called home, what would I find?" I asked him.

He shifted the kid's weight unnecessarily and said, "Probably nothing. I mean, they would all be home. So nothing would be going on."

That settled it. Gentry and one of his brothers were up to something. Then it struck me like a meteor. "She went that dance with Leo!"

"Not quite."

I had to think for a minute. "She went with Mikey?"

"Nope."

"She didn't go with my Donny?"

He put the kid down so he could slosh the goop in the pot. "No, your Donny is sitting at home like usual in the bat cave. They didn't go to the dance. A bunch of college guys are having a late Halloween party and Leo went with her."

That set off all kinds of alarms. "We have to get him! We have to go!"

"I already thought of that. Should we call Mikey?" he asked.

So we summoned Mikey and had to wait for him. He and Don were going to babysit the kids while me and Raph went out looking for the prodigal son.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Had to go look for Mike's nunchuck. Back now.

Don's afraid of babies and small children and so he was far less than pleased. He kept leaving the room when they came near him or else crossing the room to get away from them. Looked like he was square dancing without a partner. Mikey loves kids and jumped in head first. I have no idea where Skeeze is at. I'm going to kick his ass when I see him next.

Raph knew where the party was. Gentry gave him the address in case he wanted to drop by later.

Party was at a big frat house on the outskirts of NYU. Drunk people all over the lawn. Recognized one from my classes. We pushed our way into the house and I yelled at Raph, "Why did you let him go?"

"Let? I can let him do anything? He wanted to go. She said she'd go if neither of us went anyway."

So she tapped into his chivalry complex. Clever girl. He had to go to protect the freshman high school girl from drunken frat boys. "Why didn't you go?"

"I had to stay with the kids. And I don't care what happens to her precious self anyway."

It was so hot in there. I don't go to these things. Waiting an hour for a dirty toilet isn't my idea of a good time. I fully expected to find Leo and Gentry attached at the mouth.

But surprise. She was with one of the big football players, attached to his mouth instead. Raph jabbed her on the back and she tried to wave him away. He tried again and she mumbled, "M'busy."

"I'M LOOKING FOR MY BROTHER! DO YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS?"

She broke away from Anonymous Football Player and smiled at him. "Hey, Raph. This is Marcus. Marcus, this is my boyfriend, Raphael."

He looked like he was ready to strangle her and he may have if I hadn't said, "Leo came with you. Do you know where he is?"

"Oh, he passed out. He's upstairs someplace."

"Passed out?" I said. "What? Is he sick again?" I thought, more likely drunk, but didn't want to say it.

She shrugged. The football player cracked his knuckles at Raph who just said, "Oh, please," as he grabbed me and Gentry and pulled us along with him. He kept going, "Anybody seen another guy dressed like a turtle? Carries swords? Thinks he's God's gift to women?" I don't think he was taking the passed out warning very seriously.

He shoved people around on the stairs so that we could get through and finally a guy said that they'd found a guy in a green suit passed out in the living room and so they dumped in a bathtub because they were afraid he would puke on the carpet.

Raph grabbed Gentry and shook her. "What happened!"

She seemed to enjoy the violent shaking and said, "Some guy gave me a drink and Leo took it away and said that I was underage and drank it himself. Then I said he was underage too and he said he's a special exception and that I shouldn't question him. So I said he wasn't my boyfriend and couldn't order me around and then he acted like he was dizzy and fell down and people laughed at him and then he broke Dylan Macintyre's arm when he tried to grab him and then he passed out. Are you mad at me?"

Date rape drug. Ugh. How do they get into these situations? Drugged. They keep getting drugged. Do they have a "come drug me" vibe? Raph forced himself into the bathroom and walked in on some poor girl dressed in a cat leotard and threw her out of the bathroom. I felt sorry for her for a second and then didn't feel so sorry for her anymore when I saw that our Leo had been dumped in the bathtub. They were all just casually using the toilet while he was lying there a few feet away, dying for all they knew.

Raph went into instant hysterics and tried to shake him awake, which didn't work. Then he jumped in the bathtub with him and pulled him up. I couldn't tell what he was trying to do.

And there was a new development. A bunch of people who were in line for the bathroom were now coming in the room and gawking. Gentry turned around to them, actually looking really upset at the state Leo was in and said to them, "Is there a doctor in the house?"

"Great idea!" I latched on to that. I needed something proactive to do. "Any med students? Nursing students? We need help up here!"

I could hear the word getting spread down the stairs.

So then my phone rings just as people are pushing into the bathroom to look in the bathtub and Gentry was crying and some guy went, "Dude! That guy in the tub is dead!"

I answered and Don said, "So… like… how many kids are supposed to be here?"

"Six."

Long pause. "Huh. Well, bye."

And then Leo opened his eyes long enough to throw up all over Raph and then passed out again right away. Gentry helped out by yelling, "Ew!" Thankfully, the awful smell of his vomit made everybody else clear out of the bathroom and gave us some space.

Finally, a team of med students pushed their way in the room and wanted to take charge, but Raph instinctively put his body between them and turned his back to us. I had to yell at him to get him out of the tub. The med students wanted to move him out of the bathtub and tried to lift him, but Raph pushed them away and moved him by himself.

Somebody in the hallway said, "I just called 911."

Raph was about ready to knock out the med students are carry Leo off. One of them said, "He's about to stop breathing. Do you want that to happen?"

I said to Gentry, "Go downstairs and get rid of the paramedics."

"What do I say?"

"You're a good liar. I have faith in you."

Got another call from Don as the med students were checking Leo's pulse and breathing and Raph was hovering nearby, hand on his sai. "What? We're busy here!"

Don asks, "Were any of these kids… like… African American?"

"Were you issued any African American kids?"

"I don't know. I sent them all outside to play and I think I brought back the wrong ones."

Aaaaaaaaargh! "Well, go out and look!"

"I can't. Mikey went to get ice cream and I'm here by myself."

Leo's legs and arms were jerking disturbingly and I hung up on Don without thinking. The med students weren't too surprised. One of them said, "You have any Diazepam or Valium, by any chance?" to me.

"No, why would I have that?" I spread the word down the stairs.

"Could you ask the people outside if they have any?" he said as they tried to roll Leo onto his side.

Raph growled at them and said, "Don't touch him!" and pushed them all away.

A female nursing student said, "He needs to be in the recovery position so that he doesn't aspirate." I'm sure he had no idea or care what that meant. I don't think Raph was getting the point that they were trying to help.

No Valium or Diazepam came up the stairs. Gentry did. "I got rid of them. I told them that it was a prank and we got charged $500 for the false alarm. Here's the bill."

AAAAAAAAAARGH! "RAPH'LL TAKE IT OFF YOUR DAD'S TAB!" I screamed.

Leo's convulsions stopped, but Raph was still looking rather feral and I was worried he would do something desperate if Leo didn't come out of it pretty soon. The med students were thinking the same thing and were watching him cautiously as they monitored his Leo's vitals.

One of them was poking around on his shell in that area on his side where it connects to his plastron and said, "Where's the seam? We should get him out of this suit." I forgot that it was a costume party. The med student was dressed like Zorro and the nurse was dressed like Dorothy Gale.

The nurse pushed his hand away. She figured out that it wasn't a suit a long time ago.

"His breathing is better," one of the med students said.

Raph instantly suggested that they leave. The nursing student said, "I think we should stay until he wakes up to make sure he's okay." She wasn't taking the threatening glare seriously enough for my taste.

I said, "I think we can take it from here. Just help us get him into a bedroom and we'll take care of him."

Of course Raph wouldn't have any of that and carried him by himself into one of the bedrooms. He put him on the bed and then he locked Gentry out in the hallway.

It took over an hour, but eventually Leo made a loud whining sound and then tried to get up, but Raph held him down. A few minutes later he looked around at his surroundings and then his eyes lit up with panic and he said, "What the fuck?"

That made us both laugh. Raph said, "Watch your language, Fearless. You feeling alright?"

"Where's that girl…"

"Gentry's in the hallway," I said.

He looked relieved and said, "I think I need to puke. Is there a bathroom?" He struggled to sit up and I handed him to garbage can.

We tried to help him downstairs, but it was hard going because there were hot sweaty people all over and Raph took to kicking them out of the way and bellowing, "Get out of the way! Move it!"

Gentry was back in the kitchen attached to her non-boyfriend the football players. Raph threw an empty beer can at the back of her head to get her attention. He made a slashing motion across his throat and then pointed at her. She hustled over and even pretended to help Leo walk to the car.

I'll finish this later. Don's forcing me to sort my laundry. If I weren't so mad at Leo I would feel sorry for him. He seems to be throwing up a lot lately. Serves him right.


	59. Chapter 59

_I see lots of this thing on fanfiction and got to wondering what it would really be like for them and then thought of a funny scenario. I know this is one of those topics that always get listed in thread topics about fanfic clichés and stuff people don't like. But I like taking those and doing my own take on them. So I hope this amuses more than it pisses off._

Dear Diary,

Have to deal with this Leo rebellion thing. I don't know if it was so much rebellion as it was extreme stupidity.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo's problem is nothing. This is…

Okay, came home from class and found a naked guy sitting on my couch. Naturally, screamed and whipped out my pepper spray. He jumped up and ran at me and I sprayed him in the eyes.

Then he said, "Why did you do that? It's me! Now I'm a blind human!" Didn't put it together at first and thought about spraying again and realized that the voice sounded familiar.

"You're who?"

He was crying and his eyes were watering. "Mikey. It's me. Don't spray me. What did I do to deserve this? I'm dreaming right. Hit me again and maybe I'll wake up."

I knew it was him. I just knew it. His voice was the same and he had a similar… I don't know. His face was kind of the same. But he was freaking human. All pink and with body hair.

"Wow you're a redhead," I said. "And a win for the ginger camp." I tried to give him a high five, but he was headed towards the bathroom to rinse his eyes. I felt like a pervert, but I couldn't stop looking at him. He was built the same. I mean, he looked similar. But human. "How did this happen?"

"Don't you think I'd tell you if I knew?" he said. His face with in the sink and it was hard to understand him.

I threw my bathrobe at him and said, "Cover that up, please."

He put it on and stood there looking at me. He said, "Do I look bad? I look wrong, don't I?"

"No, you look normal. Boy, you're really pretty. I mean, pretty in the face for a boy."

He didn't look flattered and said, "That'll come in real handy when I kill whoever did this."

Went to the lair to have a powwow with his family. He wanted to take the sewers and wouldn't take the subway like I suggested. Thought it might cheer him up. Seemed to scare him. Looking back that was a good choice since he was wearing a pink fleece bathrobe. He stood in front of Splinter awkwardly going, "So, yeah," over and over. His sensei stared at him with shock for a while and then said, "You are still the same son that I have raised. You are a turtle and we will try everything in our power to make this right. But for now, you must endure."

"Endure!" He was pretty hysterical. Don was poking him. "How! Do what!"

"Train," Splinter said. He looked like he was about to tell him off. "As I said, you are the same son that I raised from infancy. You will continue with your training and lessons."

After the lecture, Raph came up to him and whispered, "So… can we… see…" Motioned to the bathroom.

Mikey goes, "Yeah, sure." Seemed to cheer him up.

So they all headed to the bathroom together. All four of them. And then I could hear Leo say, "Boy, it all just hangs out there, doesn't it? Is it uncomfortable?"

"Yeah, well no. Kinda."

Raph said, "Look at all that hair! You'll be as hairy as a gorilla by the time you're twenty."

"Are you sure you look normal?" Don said. "You look kind of bug eyed."

Mikey sounded offended and said, "For your information, April said I was pretty."

"Weird that you're a redhead like her," Leo muttered. "Your hair is the same color as your bandanna. I wonder if I turned human if I'd have blue hair. That would be so cool."

Then I spent the rest of the evening trying to evade Don who wanted me to strip so he could compare the two redheads. Mikey was hugging Mr. Bear and whimpering. He was still wearing my bathrobe. Leo took his measurements and we looked up his size on the internet and then I went to the closest store to buy him some clothes.

Raph said to me, "I keep seeing him out of the corner of my eye and going, 'Holy shit! Who's that!'"

* * *

Dear Diary,

Trying to get Mikey to wear underwear was a real chore. He totally didn't see the point at first. Said they looked too binding. He keeps walking around the lair making faces and shifting his arms around. Raph keeps touching his back. Guess it's weird for them that he has a back that they can touch.

Mikey's beside himself because he can't hold things properly. He's used to three fingers and now he has five. Can't even hold his nunchucks properly.

Leo whispered in my ear, "We need to put him back. He is a total liability to us in this condition."

He was still whimpering and crying on and off when I was about to leave. Seeing him as a human puts his expressions into a new context. He is the cutest teenage boy I've seen. I told him not to worry and to just go do something normal tomorrow. Like go to the mall and hang out with his fellow humans. He huffed and said, "I'm not a human. I'm a turtle in a human suit."

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey took my advice, I guess. Got a call from police that my son was caught at the mall with a backpack full of weapons and that he attacked some guys outside of Macy's. Had to go to the police station to pick him up.

He was brooding and angry this time and completely insulted that the cops arrested him. He kept saying, "I'm a good kid. You should have arrested those guys I beat up. They're criminals." He obviously doesn't have a good understanding of the American justice system. They had a social worker there because he'd told them that he doesn't go to school. I said I'd been homeschooling him. Had to make up lots and lots of shit on the spot. I said I had him when I was 14. Technically, I would have been ten, but I hoped they wouldn't notice. I said that my mother raised him as my brother so nobody would know and that's why he called me sis when I got there. I heard that's how Jack Nicholson was raised.

Really, really, really close call. They're going to send a social worker in two days to check up on us.

Tried to explain to him that normal ninja behavior is really criminal behavior in the real world. Didn't get it. He told his brothers who were all astonished at the unfair treatment and Leo said that he needs to remember that he's a ninja first and a human last. Leo said he needed to exercise some caution in public though. Raph totally disagrees. They aren't a part of human society and everything. Don pointed out that Mikey is now. Awkward silence.

Mikey told Don to use a scanner or a machine to figure out what's wrong with him. Don said, "Do you think we're on the Starship Enterprise? I don't know what happened. I don't have the slightest clue as to how to figure it out either." That's not encouraging.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey knocked on my door and when I answered he gushed, "I came up the stairs! Isn't that great and I bought this hotdog at a stand down on the street! And nobody looks at me funny. It's like being a ninja out in front of everybody. Let's do something cool. Let's go to a movie! Let's go to a bar!"

Explained that he's underage. Seemed to think that was super cool. He goes crazy over the simplest things. He got all excited when I gave him money to buy his own movie ticket and then he noticed that teenage girls were watching him and he looked at me and said, "Those girls are checking me out! And it's not because I'm a green freak like at Gentry's party!" I thought he might explode from the excitement.

After the movie I spent a rather uncomfortable fifteen minutes explaining body hair to him. He asked why girls have to shave their armpits and legs and guys don't. I don't know. He wants to shave all his body hair. And I mean all. Including pubic hair. Seems to drive him crazy. I think I convinced him not to. His facial hair doesn't seem to be much more than peach fuzz, but I need to have him shave tonight. That'll be fun. "I asked Master Splinter why he doesn't shave his off because he's covered in hair, but I just made him mad and he said it was too personal to talk about."

Had to take him to get some shoes. Took forever. He hates socks and despises shoes. Made a big deal when the lady tried to put a shoe on him and he almost kicked her out of reflex. I don't think a stranger has ever touched his feet before. I told him that he has to wear the shoes whenever he leaves the house, not just when he's in a public place. I mean, it isn't like he grew up locked in a basement with no outside knowledge of human society. He knows how the world works. It just doesn't fit into his vision of how the world should work. He thinks that because there's no law to wear shoes outdoors on the street that he doesn't have to do it. I told him that he'll get weird looks and people will think I'm a bad mother.

"It's lucky that we're both redheads," he said. "I wish I had brown hair like everybody else though."

"Don't wish that!" I've always been kind of oversensitive about my hair. "Be proud. You're one of a small percentage of the population blessed to have red hair."

"I used to think that about being a turtle," he said. Depressed. Poor kid. "Let's buy stuff for the guys! How cool will that be? What the heck would Leo want? Don'll be happy with anything that has the possibility of exploding. I want to go to Barnes and Noble and buy a book. I've always wanted to buy a book, you know. Then it will be my book. It wasn't somebody else's first."

I don't know why that made me a little sad. His world is so small. "I don't have much money, remember." I hate having to remind them of that. I gladly do what I can for them, but it isn't much and it's getting to be less and less all the time.

"Oh, that's okay. Sorry. I don't need anything." Thankfully, growing up underground with nothing but the stuff they pick out of garbage makes them easy to please.

"No, let's get them all something. What would Master Splinter want?"

He thought for a minute. His thinking expression is so cute. He wrinkles up his nose. Just like he did when he was a turtle. Just more human. Probably more cute to me and less to his brothers. If that makes sense.

We couldn't think of anything and went to an exotic exports store with lots of cool stuff. We got Master Splinter a funky walking stick. I just thought it looked cool and then Mikey figured out that it's a replica of Gandalf's staff. That's so cool. Took him to Spencer's against my better judgment and he kept laughing and pointing at the fake road signs with the sexual positions on them. We got a little metal gargoyle for Raph. Don't have any idea what he'll think. He might like it. Might take it the wrong way. Leo calls him a gargoyle sometimes when he thinks he's too broody. Got Don a lava lamp. Don't know why Mikey thought he'd like it so much. Mikey said, "He likes staring at things."

Leo was the hardest to shop for. Mikey muttered to himself, "What do you get the ninja who doesn't want earthly possessions? Let's get him another one of his Zen sex CDs. I know which ones he wants." I was opposed. Not more Enigma for him to torture us with. But that's what we did. He spent an hour and half going through the movie and music store. I had to coerce him to leave. Then we passed the gaming store on the way out and I had to wait another hour for him.

But I got my revenge and took him to the ladies department at Sears and made him hold my purse while I tried things on. I don't think it phased him either way. Actually, he was probably in overly stimulated heaven. I was in my bra and underwear and he opened the dressing room door without warning, like usual, and went, "Are you done yet? Argh!" And slammed the door. That's a first. I'm not happy about the implications of the squeal. I think an attendant yelled at him for going in there.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Everybody liked their presents. Raph seems kind of standoffish towards Mikey. Don't know why. Mikey's too spun around to notice. I reminded Mike that he has to spend the night at my place because the social worker is coming tomorrow. He wanted to hang with his brothers. He's worried that they don't want him anymore since he's so different.

They all came with us to my building so they could spar on the roof like normal. It was really hard to watch tonight.

Mikey can't move the way he used to. He isn't as strong or as fast and he gets winded really fast. He was panting and Leo said, "That's so strange how you're out of breath all the time."

"Yeah, I think my lungs are smaller. Come on, Don. Don't hold back. Just give me what you've got."

"Really?" Don asked.

Raph was sitting on the sidelines watching. I don't think he knows what to make of it. He almost seems mad at him. I can't see why.

Don sparred with Mikey, but Mike can't hold his weapons and kept dropping them and stuff. And Don kept whacking him in the chest and on the back with his bo. It made Mikey really mad and he kept rushing at him.

"Stop putting your back to him!" Raph yelled. "You don't have a shell, remember? Block with your legs. You can use those, right?"

He tried to take his advice, but he couldn't remember and Don hit him harder and harder and finally he threw his nunchucks across the roof in a rage and stormed downstairs. Raph picked them up and put them on his belt. Leo's not too happy. He said to Raph, "We're going to have to design some new kind of… I don't know. But he can't physically…"

He doesn't have the same physical capabilities that he had before and everybody knows it. Leo's right. He's a liability to them and we need to figure out what happened and fast.

He's in a lot of pain and isn't walking exactly upright, but he won't accept any help. I told him to sleep in my bed because it's softer than the couch and he got uptight and said no.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The social worker just left. Mikey was making me breakfast when she came to the door. He's wearing his biggest sweatshirt and looks kind of lost in it. It didn't help that his face is a little bruised this morning. She asked if it was from the fight at the mall and he was mad that he had to pretend that some human had gotten a hit on him. He fights other humans spectacularly well, according to self reports anyway. She pointed out that he doesn't have a bedroom and I had to make up more stuff. He lives with my mother, remember? He was here visiting. Then she declared that because I don't have documentation of his education that he has to go to school. He looked like he could faint from the horror. I assured him that it will not happen. I will die first before I let it happen. He would not do well in the public school system.

We went to the lair to report how it went and then he stared at the lava lamp with Don. "Do you want it?" Don asked. "I have all kinds of weird crap in the lab."

"No, that's okay. I heard that they explode if you get them too hot."

It immediately found its way onto a hotplate. Leo removed the lamp from the hotplate after pulling up an internet article about a guy who was killed when his lamp exploded. I think he looks at Mikey now and sees a bunch of vulnerable pink flesh. Either that or he thought it was a waste of money to blow up a new lamp. I suspect the latter.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Left Mikey at home and cleaned up the apartment a little. There's some bloody gauze in the garbage can. I think he was hurt worse than he was letting on. I don't think I'm going to talk to Leo about the GHB thing. He's a big boy and can take care of himself.

Hey, Raph's home? I didn't even notice that he'd gotten back. I was so distracted with Mikey.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph told Pete that he would call him in to Child Protective Services if he didn't stick around with his kids more. I guess Don found the right kids because nothing more was said about that. I think I need to go over and talk to them about that stuff.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey was here again last night. He doesn't want to sleep at home and I know why. Don hurt him really badly when they were sparring and he doesn't want them to know. I ordered him to take his shirt off. His chest and back are half bruised. I mean, severe bruises. And he said that his shirt rode up when he fell once and the pavement skinned him. And on top of that he thinks he cracked a rib. He tried to pick up a bottle of Tylenol and his fingers didn't grip it right and it spun out of his hand. He yelled, "I can't do anything right anymore! It's like all my bones are in backwards. And I hate my hair. It stinks and I hate washing it. And I hate socks. My feet are hot and wet."

So I had him sit on the couch and said, "I'm going to rub your back. Sit there."

He was too depressed to argue. It's so strange to be this close to him and touch him and that he's human. It just seems so odd. I know I'm not elaborating much but… His skin is so different. No reptilian quality to it and the fact that I can feel hair anywhere on him is bone chilling. I rubbed his shoulders and neck for a while and he relaxed a little, but not much. He said, "I think my arm hair is repulsive."

"No, it isn't."

His leg kicked out in a funny way and hit the arm of the couch and he said, "Whenever I want to move, my body does something else. It's like an alien is controlling me with a probe."

Then Raph called him and they had one of those funny Raph/ Mikey speak conversations. They speak their own language sometimes. It really perked him up. Mikey was saying, "Yeah, but in my universe it's fun. You can't live in my universe. You need your own universe. There's only room for me in my universe. I'm the sovereign ruler of benevolence and wonder. What's your universe like? (pause) I feel bad for all those women in your harem. I don't need a harem. I'm easy to satisfy. I only need one woman. And the rivers in my universe are chocolate milk. Beat that. Yeah, you would pick that. What's your national anthem? Mine's 'Eye of the Tiger.'"

I was listening to him while I continued the neck and back rubbing. Then he said, in a repressed giggle. "Shut up. You're sick sometimes. Jealous much? Well, if it did happen I would call you straightaway. Would too. I would call you and lie. How would you call me? You wouldn't know it happened. Take care of Mr. Bear for me. That's killing him. Don't do that. Leo says we're sparring again. (long pause) No, it's fine. I'll be there. I gotta go to bed. Bye, douche bag."

He hung up and then said, "You know, Don held back a lot when we were sparring. I know he did."

I know we've all been putting this off because of the shock and all. But how the hell did this happen?


	60. Chapter 60

_Wow. Sixty chapters. I guess I'll keep doing these as long as I have time and ideas. Just when I think I've hit a dead end, I come up with a new idea. But eventually I have to stop because they need to meet Casey and all. Hehe. _

Mikey's Humanity Blog:

Well, it's not actually a blog because I'm writing it by hand, but it sounds less girly than keeping a diary. My fake mommy is making write this. She threatens to abuse me when I call her that.

That social worker lady put me in school. I'll be a man and admit that I cried. I'd rather spend the day in a torture chamber than trapped with a bunch of humans. In broad daylight. I'm shaking now thinking about it. It just sounds so exposed and I don't like that. I like people, but not that much. I think I do. I like talking so I guess I like people.

* * *

Day 1:

Well, it's day 3, but I didn't start this until the third day. I spent the night back home. I didn't want to go back until I thought they couldn't tell I got hurt the other day. I look more like April's brother than my own brothers' brother. I don't like that. Off topic.

I got all dressed up for school and Raph gave me a really detailed map showing me how to get to school. He's afraid I'll get lost. He said he wished school was at night so he could follow me and make sure I didn't get lost. I told him I'd call him if I got lost. He's really fussing lately. Leo gave a speech about secrecy and not to give the game away and that I have to be guarded about my family. Makes me feel bad. I can't go to school and tell anybody about my family. I have to pretend that I'm April's bastard baby. Don's crazy excited. He wants to go to school really badly. Wants to read all my textbooks. I told them that I should just hide out in the sewers and pretend I'm dead. We don't have to do this. But April would get in trouble if I don't go to school and they need to falsify documents to get her out of it. Like that I was enrolled at a school where my fake grandma lives I think.

The school is freaking huge. There were people everywhere. I was scared at first. I've been around some people before but not as an anonymous part of the crowd. Mostly they try to kill me so this was really different. I had no idea what to do. I had to call home and ask for help. Nobody told me what to do when I got there. Just that I should go. Leo said to ask somebody what to do. They ignored me and somebody laughed at me and Raph said I should hit them and Don told me to go to the office.

I've seen enough TV that I should have known that. So I went to the secretary and told her that I was new and I needed to know where to go. She asked my name and I told her that my name was Gregor Samsa because I was being kind of a smartass and Leo didn't want me to give my real name. She didn't have anything on file for Gregor Samsa and said that only Michelangelo Hamato was expected. April accidentally gave them my real name. I'll just swipe my file when I'm back to normal anyway.

So they took me around the office and I spent a while waiting while they printed out a schedule and they gave me a locker number. It took me forever to get it open because my fingers don't work. And nobody would help either. That made me mad. I didn't ask for help but it seemed like somebody should have noticed. Then I called Leo to ask if I should go to class. Seems like a waste of time. He said to go to the ones that looked interesting and case the perimeter and look for security weaknesses and suspicious personnel the rest of the time. Asked what to do about my locker. Nobody knew what to do. Raph said I should pick the lock but there's no lock to pick. Can't break it. I don't think it's legally mine to break. I don't want to get April in any more trouble.

I went to the first class, which was English. I know I'm not setting a good example here in my blog but I'm in a hurry. It was okay. They were talking about grammar and I walked in fifteen minutes late because I couldn't get my thing open until then and she made a big deal about how I was late on my first day and I said that I was being fashionably late and nobody laughed. She gave me a textbook to borrow and said that I have to buy my books. I wanted to sit in the front because there were a lot of cute girls in the back and I knew I couldn't listen if I was by them. But the only free seat was back there. They just ignored me anyway. But it was hard not to stare at them. I have a big problem with that lately. I've been staring at April's boobs like a big pervert.

So that class got done and we have to write an essay about something. Don's going to do all my homework for me so I took the assignment and didn't read it. I wandered around during math class. Didn't want to go to that. The doors are mostly clear of obstruction. There was a desk propping one open, which I didn't like. The exits are all at the end of long corridors, so that's good if there's a mass exodus out of the building, but some of the classroom doors are like six feet away from the exits and that's not great since they seem to hang open a lot of the time. And the windows are high off the ground and pretty big and I think they need to be opened with a stick. But you could make your way through if you were agile and desperate enough. Just jump up from the outside, smash the window and you're through.

There are three floors, so that would be an option on the first floor if you're human. If you're a ninja, all three are targets because there are really narrow ledges under them. They have metal detectors and guards at the front door and that seems totally pointless since the windows and exits are all free and clear. I couldn't bring my shurikens or my chucks because April told me about that last night.

So I'm not too pleased with the security. I didn't go down to the basement or up on the roof yet. I'll do that tomorrow.

I have to take biology. They're going to dissect a frog. I guess I am too since I'm in the class. I'm going to skip that day. It sounds awful sad to cut up a little frog just so we can look around inside him. They are cousins after all.

April picked me up and made a big deal calling me son and everything and I think she was trying to embarrass me. I hope she doesn't know that I've been looking down her shirt a lot on purpose. I'm writing two blogs. One for her and one for you guys.

Now I want to clarify some speculation about April that we've had going on for a while now. I know that you guys can tell that she's pretty in the ranking of humans and everything, but let me tell you from first hand point of view. She's dead sexy. Yeah, she's pretty. But she's sexy. I think it's because she's older. Maybe it's because I've seen her naked a lot. Not since I've been human, but before and it's in my head. Ugh. What's wrong with me? I need to stop thinking about this. But I can't. It's like a disease. You know how hard it is when you're a mutant with no women around your own species. It's like 1000+ times harder when you're surrounded by them every minute and they're half naked or mostly naked or sometimes all naked. I don't know how human men function or get anything done.

I'm going to stop now. I can't think about this anymore.

* * *

Day 2 (or 4):

I think it's because my brain isn't used to human hormones so they're just revving at full speed. I hope they calm down soon. I don't know how many more ways I can find to cover up certain stuff. April caught on to the throw pillow between the legs as soon as I did it and she keeps laughing at me now.

School is still scary. I talked to a bunch of people though. We were supposed to dissect those frogs and I skipped that class. Still haven't gone to math. Handed in Don's essay. I hope he didn't make me sound too smart. I don't want to be put in advanced classes. Haven't seen any notorious characters yet. No foot ninjas or purple dragons sporting their colors at school. They know better I guess.

Raphie, I talked to this girl that you'd like. She wears all black and reads poetry about dead people. She paints her face white and wears contacts that make her eyes look huge like a doll. She said her name is Lost Lenore. I said my name was Gregor Samsa and now I think she wants to date me. You like creepy people. So you'd like her.

I talked to the big guys on campus. One of them tried to grab me after class when I was outside snooping around the dumpsters. Wanted to see if there was anything good out there. Nothing. Just old food from the cafeteria. The food is okay. Nothing that would kill you. They think they're really cool. They're actually just dumb big guys who can't do anything but beat people up. So I told them that I'd keep their testicles as trophies if they tried to touch me. So they did. And I did a few fancy flips to scare them away because the bell was about to ring. They ring this bell when they want you to get to class like we're dogs. Do you call dogs with a bell? I bet somebody does. Anyway I don't like it. Makes me feel like a slave.

I talked to the popular girls because April told me lots of bad stuff about the popular girls when she was in school. They must have been pretty bad to her. Popular girls must be bred to be evil. These girls are really hot and they stand around looking hot and watching other people watch them being hot. And they're mean. One of them asked me if I'm a girl. I told her I'd show her that I'm not and pretended to open my pants. That made them like me. So now I'm their friend.

I have this enormous problem and I've griped to you all on the phone about this already. I'm developing these creepy crushy feelings for April and I think I need to stay away from her. I have to call her Mom in front of the social worker and this whole thing is messed up. I hope Don has some news on the "turn Mikey back into a turtle" front. Because I'm slowly turning into a sex-crazed idiot.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I found the little jerk's diary. He didn't get it done in time to swap with the fake that he was going to give to me. I'm not worried about the "creepy, crushy" feelings. He's a sixteen year old boy. What else was going to happen? I actually feel bad for him.

Asked Don today what he's thinking about. Like for any ideas on how it happened. What to do next. Just shrugged. Said nothing.

* * *

Dear Diary,

How did Leo let this happen? He "sparred" with Mikey and hit him so hard that I had to take him to the hospital. Broke two of his ribs. I'm going to kill Leo.

Leo's defense is that normally Mikey could sustain much worse than that. They're built harder than humans, with the shell on top of that. Said he was trying his best to go easy on him and he hurt him anyway. I don't care. Why are they still trying to train him?

They all snuck in to his hospital room after dark and I thought Raph would try to physically carry him out of there, but he was really good with him. Told him to sit still for a few days. For some reason, he can tell that they're going to break him if they play with him too hard and Leo and Don can't. They're in denial, I suppose.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Fetched my Mikey from the hospital today. Not letting him go home. His brothers are too rough with him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

He went home anyway. I guess it's up to him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don is getting desperate and said to me today, "We'd better figure something out before we accidentally kill him." So he decided that the last line of defense is to take him to Queen Marie and see what she has to say about it. She might be able to see who did it. I could hear him rolling his eyes as he said it.

Mikey's career as a public school student has ended. We came up with the proper fake documentation to get him "transferred" to a school in San Francisco.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Took Mikey out to Central Park and watched as he tried to climb trees and run around and chase people's dogs. But he was in pain and had to stop to catch his breath a lot. He's used to functioning with broken ribs. The doctor almost charged me with child abuse when he came in because he has so many scars and old healed bones. He tried to pick up a little girl and her mother hustled over and told him off. Now he's sad. Doesn't understand social boundaries. And why would he? There's a difference between reading about humans and watch them on TV and being one of them. And he's never had proper physical boundaries before anyway.

But I think he's right. He isn't a human. He's just a turtle in a human suit.

We had a stereotypical picnic because he'll never be able to do that again if and when he gets turned back. He kept going crazy about how cool it is to eat fresh food in the daytime in front of people. And not at night out of a dumpster. Simple blessings.

"Ants!" he said. "Boy, Butch would be mad. It's just like in those clichés about ants at picnics. They're true. I thought it was an urban legend."

Then I leaned over to butter some bread and he made one of those funny little eep noises and put his plate in his lap. I guess it was a preemptory strike. I decided to talk to him about it or at least make fun of him while I had the chance. "You okay there?"

"Fine."

"I'm really flattered that you find my breasts so powerful."

Pouted. "I can't help it. I have lust disease. It's awful. Were you like this when you were sixteen? I'm still really fifteen, but close enough…"

"No, I was a girl. Girls don't have that problem."

"Why?"

He is clueless, isn't he? "Because our brains work differently. And our goods aren't right there in front of everybody, I guess."

We ate and he tried not to look around at the other people. Guess he thought seeing other girls would get him resprung. He's so funny. I realize now that I should be put off or embarrassed by all this, but honestly, I think it's cute.

Then I asked him, "What do you think you're brothers would be like if they were human?"

His head snapped up and he went back to Mikey-talks-a-lot mode. "Oh, we talk about that sometimes. Raph says he'd jump the first woman he met. He's lying though. He just says that kind of thing to make Leo mad. He's the one who told me not to go looking for… you know… romance or anything. He said it would really screw with my head after I'm back to normal. He doesn't doubt it at all that I'll be a turtle again."

That surprised me. "I thought he'd be paying for the hooker."

"No, he wouldn't do that," he said, smiling. He has such blind faith in his big brothers. "Leo always says he would just open a dojo and it would be a chance for him to look after us better and stuff like that. Honestly…." he whispered, like Leo was around to hear him. "…he'd be the one out getting laid right away. Raph would be too busy driving motorcycles off cliffs. And Don would be in college before you could spit."

"I don't believe that about Leo and Raph." It still sounded all backwards to me.

Mikey shrugged. "Well, I might be wrong. I'm just guessing. I think Leo would put the moves on you."

I didn't say anything. What should I have done? Agreed? Disagreed? Felt rude either way. "You think so?"

"Yeah, you're the only girl he knows very well and I think he'd formally ask for your hand or something. Maybe not. Who knows?"

"Don't you think Don would ask me out? You didn't even mention what he would do."

He had to think about it. "He doesn't talk about that kind of stuff much. I think if he was human he might try to ask you out too. But he'd be so subtle that you probably wouldn't even notice. Or else he'd say that he had to put his career in the foreground and wait until he had a PhD in everything and then you'd be too old. Come to think of it, Leo might do that too. He'd have to the Intergalactic Ninja of Supreme Perfection though. So then Raph might be the one. I'm getting confused. Let's not talk about this anymore. It's making me weird."

Good choice. "What about you?" I had to know.

He looked cheeky and said, "Meh. Too old."

"Oh, really? And I'm not too old for your brothers? You just said all three would ask me out."

"They have really low standards though," he said, grinning really big.

I put him in a headlock and he yelled, "Child abuse!"

He gathered up some caterpillars in a cup and I think when he went home to the lair a few found their way onto Raph's pillow.


	61. Chapter 61

_Had a randomly inspirational talk with a total stranger and it gave me some inspiration. I had something not very good for this chapter, but I ditched it in favor of this. And I like the idea of Leo finding a way to gross out Raph and get the better of him in a joke. Raph seems like a guy who would be fun to pick on if he weren't so dangerous. I like to see them out grossing each other. Can't resist the Facebook statuses. Just got a comment that Don wasn't doing enough for Mikey. April's too preoccupied with Mikey at the moment to spend much time in the lair or thinking about what he's doing. But I'll address it directly. Also making fun of turtlecest again. It gives me a perverse laugh. Sorry to all you turtlecest fans._

Dear Diary,

Don sent me a message that didn't make any sense. Said: Those stripes are really long and I don't know hwere they weent.

Leo called and told me he was texting in his sleep again. He's been sitting in the lab kind of muttering to himself and looking up useless crap for a few days. That's why we haven't been to the psychic directly because Leo's forced to wait until Don researches every possible dead end lead. I wish he would have told me that. I would have helped. No wonder Don keeps emailing me at 3am. Leo reports that he cycles through his weird OCD stuff for a few hours and then goes back to doing his turtle to human research. So his mental state is a little foggy right now and I haven't talked to him much lately.

Leo said that he's looking at astral projection now, which made him roll his eyes. And he was looking for microchips and implants the other day. Mikey thinks he was doing it just so he could get him naked again and say annoying things about his body. Leo thinks they're wasting time with this and that they need to hurry over to voodoo lady's house.

Called Don just now to ask what he has on the dehumaning. Said he has -10. Whatever that means. And all this time I thought he was sitting around the lair enjoying Mikey's absence. I don't know what Raph's up to. I asked Leo if Raph's been out howling at the moon in a fit of angst and he got mad and said he was out shaking down his informants and not to think so little of him. Hit a nerve there. I guess his worst nightmare is that Raph is uselessly roaming the city in a broody tantrum.

I've noticed that when something bad happens we just let Don stew in the bat cave until he comes up with something brilliant and then we all go, "Aha! That's so obvious!" and run off. Like we could have ever thought of it without him. I think we need to cut that out. He isn't a machine and he doesn't always have an answer. Like when he tells us he doesn't have an answer the first time, we should take his word for it and stop letting him torment himself like this, like he's supposed to be omniscient.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Going on a blind date. Yup. Susan's brother. I used to hang out with her a lot but I've kind of lost track of her a little bit. Saw a picture of him. Very pleased.

The boys are here protesting that I shouldn't go. Don hacked into his personnel files at work, police records, medical records, credit report. He knows this guy inside and out. I told him not to tell me anything about it. He didn't try to protest the date too strongly, so I don't think he found anything bad. Raph hinted around that, well blatantly yelled is more like it, that he was wasting his time researching Susan's brother instead of returtling Mikey. Don said that Raph can take up the research from now if he's not pleased. Shut him up right away.

Leo wants me to look classy. Said it will make a good impression. Raph said, "It's not a job interview. She's looking to get laid."

"Well, not on the first date, I hope," Leo said.

Mikey was baking. He was hoping to keep me home by making a good smell just before I was headed out. "He means don't sleep with him until you're married."

"Till you're forty," Don added. "And married."

"I've been sexless for too long. My life needs more sex," I muttered.

"Why do you talk about it so much?" Leo said. "There's more to your life that than, or rather, your lack thereof."

Raph held up a skimpy top and said, "Wear this."

"Too cold." But I took it and put it on anyway.

He said, "Could be lower." And he stuck his sai down my cleavage.

"Quit it. You're stretching it out." I should have been more bothered by his disturbing behavior.

As I was headed towards the door, Don said to me, "Don't we get kisses goodbye?"

"You guys don't deserve it," I said.

Leo followed me to the door and put on a final burst of desperate flirtation. I don't know what he was trying to get out of me. Probably trying to get me to stay home. He said, "I would very much like a kiss from you. It would give you something positive to keep in mind when you're date doesn't measure up."

I laughed at him and said, "Fine. Give me your fabulous kiss so that I can think of you while I'm making out with my date."

He laughed too and Mikey called from the kitchen, "Let her kiss Raph goodbye. He's the great lover amongst us remember?"

"Damn straight!" Raph was holding a fly swatter and looked tremendously sexy.

I said, "Oh, how would you know?"

"You should know! You've tasted me before!"

I could hear Don go, "Tasted?" like it sounded really gross.

"That was against my will, as I recall." I was ready to open the door and Raph darted past me and slammed the door shut with one hand.

I knew better than to think he was going to say a proper goodbye. He said, "I don't get why that would have anything to do with it? Against your will or not, you have to admit that I'm good."

"How would you know that you're good?" Leo asked, putting on some swagger of his own. "I would think that the pleasure of the kissee would indicate your talent. And if April was resistant... See, in my case I can safely say that the woman was very satisfied."

"Ugh, gross," Don said as he crossed behind us to watch TV. He has a way of drifting through conversations and contributing one sentence.

Raph had that look in his eye that he gets when he and Leo are about to do something weird. Usually when he wants to do something funny that will bother his brothers and me. He had the same look when they were plotting the phone number contest. He said, "Leo, there's only one way to solve this and you know what that is."

Leo tried heroically to look sober. "Yeah, what's that?"

"We have to kiss each other."

I could hear Don protest, "Oh, come on, Raph. You're going to make April sick."

Mikey was laughing in the kitchen. "Yeah, Raph. That's the logical thing to do."

Leo raised his eye ridges and said, "How do you figure that?"

"We could both kiss April, but we don't want to contaminate her on her way to see her date. He'd be a big letdown after us. So we have to kiss each other. That way it'll be fair."

I thought Leo would argue with him or tell him off. But he grabbed Raph, like an actor in an old movie and said, really melodramatically, "Raphael, I can't hold it back any longer. I've been in love with you ever since we were toddlers. The color of your eyes. They're golden…. Urine color…"

Don said, "Cut it out, you two."

But Raph had to play along. If he didn't, then Leo would think he was a wimp. He said, "Leo…" He looked like he was searching for something to say and finally said, "You're so full of shit." Mikey was going hysterical in the kitchen.

Leo ignored that and said, "There's only one thing that can appease me. And you know what that is…"

"Uh, oh, Raph," Don gloated from the living room. "You're in it now."

I wasn't sure what was going on for a minute and then I realized that Leo was going to call Raph's bluff and kiss him. I had to see this. He kept kind of making these funny flirty faces at Raph, who was trying not to screw up his own face in response and keep cool because Leo was advancing on him. Raph closed his eyes and looked like a little kid that's just eaten a lemon as he waited. And it was even funnier because as Leo came closer, Raph backed up until Raph was doubled backward. Just when Leo got close enough to close in, and I mean like a millimeter away, Raph jumped back and yelled, "I DON'T LIKE THIS GAME ANYMORE! YOU WIN!"

Don jumped up and cheered and said, "Leo wins!"

Mikey wandered out of the kitchen going, "Maybe that'll teach him not to talk trash."

"Oh, shut up." But he was laughing and red in the face and embarrassed. As he should have been. Fun embarrassed. Not angry embarrassed. He can take a joke sometimes.

I said, "What's wrong, Raph? You're all talk, huh? I got to get going. I'm not going to have much of an appetite now though."

And I laughed to myself the whole way to the restaurant. I guess there are some things that even Raph won't do on a dare.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Thought I'd add a break here for dramatic effect. Mikey's reading over my shoulder and just pretended to be shocked.

Michelangelo is a little terd. And a human. *sticks tongue out at Mike*

Anyway, the guy stood me up. I'm sure Susan has some really legitimate excuse for him. Maybe his girlfriend wouldn't let him go out. Just joking. He doesn't have a girlfriend. His wife would find out. Mike wrote those last lines about the girlfriend and wife while I was in the bathroom.

Well, I came home from my failed date and I was really upset and weepy. Mikey was there alone eating his cookies and icing his ribs. He asked what was wrong and I said something like I'd never have sex again and then I went to bed without saying anything else to him.

I had this awful dream. I don't remember much of it, but there was a guy wandering around my room in the dark and I woke up just as he was about to jump on the bed. He crouched down in my closet and was going to spring at me, like a frog. It sounds silly when I write it now, but I woke up and yelled. Mikey was asleep on the couch and he opened the door, pulling at his pajama top. I think there was a delay because I'm sure he sleeps naked out there and he had to put the pajamas on first.

He rubbed his eyes in the dark and said, "You okay?" His hair was sticking up at funny angles.

I think I gave some kind of lame assertion of being okay. He didn't believe it, I guess, because he got in bed with me. I was surprised. He hasn't even come in here since he became human. "I still have a scar from where that guy stabbed me," he said. "It's in my fleshy human stomach instead of my plastron. Cool, huh?"

That felt totally random to me. "Why did you bring that up?"

"You yelled my name like you were scared, so I thought you were dreaming about that. Sorry, if I presumed wrong."

I wasn't sure. I don't remember him being in the dream. Weird.

Mikey didn't cuddle up to me straightaway like normal. He laid on his back and looked at the ceiling. "I feel so flat. No shell. I don't like it. I feel like I'm going to break in half." Then he waited for a minute and said, "I want to talk to you about something."

I thought he was going to proposition me, to be honest.

He said, "Leo was right when he said that you worry about sex too much. I know we kid around about it a lot, but we're just joking. You talk about it like it's what defines your life. Or your self-worth. You know?" He wanted me to signal that it was okay before he went on. So I nodded. "Maybe you're not supposed to have anybody right now. I mean, it'll happen when you aren't looking for it. I know people say that a lot, but I think it's true. And we all love you better than some stupid guy you meet on a blind date ever will. You're not mad now are you?" He kind of shrunk away from me a little.

Actually, at the moment I was kind of mad. It was too obviously true and it made me feel stupid. But I said no. Didn't realize that he was right until I woke up with his arms around my waist and my head on his shoulder. He smelled pretty awful this morning and I ordered him to bathe. He asked if he could shave his underarms again and I finally surrendered. Fine. Nobody will care.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mike's whining because he cut his armpits shaving.

This astounding announcement came up on my Facebook this morning:

Leonardo Hamato is now in a relationship.

I frantically looked at his profile and it said his "partner" was Raphael Hamato. I read the comments underneath it.

**Leonardo Hamato**: Now our love is official.

**Raph Hamato**: somebody needs to dump the trash today and I don't want to do it

**Donatello Adonis Hamato**: Who's the butch in this relationship? Butch, I'll do it. The garbage, not the relationship thing

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: Where are you two registered? Did you tell Splinter yet?

**Raph Hamato**: Could you imagine if we told him something like that lets do it on his birthday oh that would be so funny

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: What happens when two sibs get married?

**Donatello Adonis Hamato**: That's called incest, Mike. Look it up. Or better yet, don't

**Raph Hamato**: he would be like what did I do? Bet you fifty bucks he wouldn't even say anything for like an hour

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: I know that I mean would they both be each others brother-in-law or would they both be splinters sons-in-law?

**Leonardo Hamato**: I think he'd have died of a heart attack, Raph. Let's not kill our father on his birthday.

**Gentry Harris**: omg are you serius? Aren't you bothers

**April O'Neil**: I want to know who the better kisser is

**Leonardo Hamato**: Gentry, we are brothers of the soul, but not of the flesh. Mikey, I think we would be both. April, me of course. I'll give you a demonstration later, if you wish.

**Donatello Adonis Hamato: **So did you have fellatio yet?

**Leonardo Hamato: **Yeah sure

**Raph Hamato: **I guess we did whatever that means nobody took out the trash yet and it stinks

**Donatello Adonis Hamato: **You two are idiots

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: ever hear of a dictionary? Just declare a win this is getting on my nerves

**Raph Hamato**: Who gets to be on top tonight there I win

**Leonardo Hamato**: I bow down to my competitor.

I still can't believe they did that. I asked Mikey who initiated it and he said he thought Raph did. He was probably getting Leo back for last night. Mikey didn't think anything of it. "We lead pretty boring lives and I guess we get up to some strange stuff," he said. I think that's a drastic understatement. Extremely bizarre is a better term for it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Alas, the tragic has happened. My Facebook said an hour later that Raphael Hamato was no longer in a relationship. That got a few remarks:

**Raph Hamato: **Sorry leo it was you and not me

**April O'Neil**: What went wrong Raph? Was he too much man for you?

**Raph Hamato**: I was too much man for him

**Leonardo Hamato**: I could do better.

**Mikey Coolness Hamato**: Anybody seen my chucks?

**Raph Hamato**: M they're here in on the couch when are you coming home were going to that stupid psychic tonight

**Donatello Adonis Hamato**: And so ends an epic romance

**Leonardo Hamato**: Psychic trip tonight! Woohoo. What a way to jazz up an evening. Raph, I took out the garbage

**Raph Hamato**: k

**Donatello Adonis Hamato**: I downgrade the kitchen biohazard level from orange to yellow. Next time I dump dead beetles into the trash, I'll put them into a separate bag to spare Raph's delicate self.

**Raph Hamato**: Go fuck yourself

* * *

Dear Diary,

Now that the disturbing incest jokes are over, I'll start a new entry. We just got back from the voodoo lady.

Before we were scheduled to leave, Don called me and babbled a lot of excited nonsense and I had to tell him to start over because I didn't understand him. He said, "I SUCK!"

"Okay."

"It was so freaking obvious. I was looking at string theory and junk but it was that glass jar that Mikey stole from what's her name. She must have put a protective curse on her stuff."

"That is freaking obvious. Why didn't you think of that earlier?" See how grateful we are.

Sighed into the phone. "I was thinking it would be more complex than that. I did come up with an interesting theory to solve the grandfather paradox in time travel and I think I figured out how that Doctor could travel into our dimension from Hades. I started looking at that because I was wondering if we had another Mikey from another dimension and then it struck me that Hades could just be another dimension and that book he used... Whatever… It was useless. Like it'll come in handy."

"Would have been helpful when you were fighting Doctor Hades."

Then he goes, "Did you know that an underwire is a bra? I told Raph that they're on the list of stuff that you shouldn't wear through a metal detector at airports because they'll set them off and I said that we should tell Mikey not to wear one when he goes to school and Raph said that it was a bra."

For a genius he sure has lots of blond moments. He sounded like he was jacked on caffeine because he was babbling like a crack addict. He went, "I gotta go. I hooked up a strobe light and it's giving me a migraine. I want to see how many strobes I can have on at the same time without having a seizure. I have a burrito in my toaster oven that I hooked up to the car battery. I ran out of plugs. I need more extension cords. Oh! Could you get me some duct tape? Some of the wires are hanging out. I gotta go. Raph says they're leaving without me." I could hear him yelling at somebody in the background as he hung up, "Hey, what did you do with the wire cutters?"

I told Mikey what Don said. About the voodoo curse, not about the bra. He pulled out a pair of scissors and sat there cutting up his underwear while we waited for his brothers. I tried to get him to stop because we don't know if he's right.

Don was running around like he'd left half his brain at home. He was hugging that glass jar to his plastron like it was his firstborn son. Leo mumbled to me that he took caffeine pills before he left and he hadn't sleep in two days.

Took me about five minutes to get organized, but Don spent the whole time going, "Come on! Come on!" Mikey was hopping up and down in place, impatient to get going.

Raph was already gone and on his way by the time I'd spent my five minutes in the bathroom.

Queen Marie's dogs weren't happy to see us. They barked like mad when I came up the path to her house and a few growled. I thought they were going to bite me. I knew the guys were nearby and I kept going, "They won't let me get bit. They won't let me get bit." Like they were close enough to do anything.

I knocked on her front door and her lights all went off. Then I saw the blinds open a few centimeters and her eyeball looking out at me. "Closed!" she yelled through the door.

I yelled back, "Let me in! You cursed by brother, you bitch!" I know, I'm such a sweet talker. I think Raph's brand of persuasion is rubbing off on me.

There was a pause and then I heard her yelling and Leo's voice in her living room. She unlocked the door. Guess she forgot that my brothers are all ninjas. She wasn't very happy to see me. Mikey was hovering near the snake cage, but he wasn't touching it this time. It was like déjà vu only Mikey was human. I think I was even wearing the same thing. Only thing that's different is Don's legs were bouncing as he sat on the couch and he was humming "Springtime for Hitler" and he was still hugging the beetle jar.

Raph is usually full of subtly and finesse, you know, and he said to her, "Turn Mikey back into a turtle. Here's your fucking bug jar."

But for once he hit it right on the head. She took the jar from Don and said, "I hope this teaches you, Little One, not to take things that belong to others."

Leo raised his hand like he was in a classroom. "I have to ask. What kind of curse did you put on him? You obviously can't turn a human into a human."

She seemed awfully happy to me for the situation. I think she liked knowing that she had gotten the better of them for so long. Don said out of nowhere, "Mikey's afraid of humans. That's right, isn't it? He turned into a human because he's afraid of them. If it were Leo he would be failing at everything he did."

Leo looked at Don out of the corner of his eye, but didn't say anything.

"Yes, you are clever, aren't you?" Queen Marie said to Don. I think he's her favorite.

He went all flattered and said, "Not really. I try."

Raph helped by saying, "He doesn't know what an underwire is."

She pointed at Raph and said, "Quiet, you!"

He jumped to his feet and was about to say or do something we would all regret when Leo said, "I think you should lift the curse now."

"Why should I? He hasn't returned what I've lost."

Raph pulled out some money. He keeps it in his shell somehow. Reminds me of keeping it in your bra. He said, "Fine, how much were your beetles worth?"

"Seventy five dollars." Crossed her arms. She looked like a shrewd businesswoman now.

"Seventy five bucks!" Raph flipped through his money, looking bitter.

Mikey wasn't happy that Raph didn't think his life was worth $75. She put the money in her bra and said, "Plus twenty-five for the spell."

"I'm not paying you for cursing my brother!" Raph yelled. "You're going to take it off and you'll do it for free or I'll…" He was quiet after he realized that physical threats were counterproductive. Guess he couldn't think of anything constructive to say.

Leo took charge and said, "I must insist that you lift the spell. I will gladly pay you the extra measly twenty-five dollars if that's what it takes." He searched his belt and pulled out a few bills. "Do you have change for two twenties?"

So they had to make change and we had to wait while she fetched her money box. Meanwhile, Mikey yelled, "Just hurry up!" He and Don were both jittering so much that they were making me nervous. Mikey sat on Don's knee, which looked really odd.

"Why are you guys doing that?" Raph asked, leering away from them.

"I don't want to touch her stuff," Mikey said, "But I'm getting tired."

Don bounced his leg really hard and said, "Boy, you're light."

Mikey made a face. I think Don was hurting his junk, but he didn't want to say anything. Guess nothing is sacred between them.

She came out of the bedroom and handed Leo his money and raised her eyebrows at them. Mikey jumped up and said, "Let's do this!"

He sat down in her little spell casting area and then he had to wait while she gathered her stuff and lit some incense. I thought he was about to strangle her from impatience. But then she finally did her spell. She tossed some sand in his face and made him hold some chicken's feet and then she danced around and made scary noises. Finally, she said, "Now the curse is lifted. Please get out. I do not want to see you, Death Giver, or your blood soaked brother again." She gave a little smile to Don, who shrunk up in fright at the attention.

We left and they all ran ahead of me and I think they forgot me. All but Don. He was too tired to run away. Mikey couldn't keep up and Leo and Raph had to keep stopping to wait for him. Eventually, they were gone and we were alone.

"Well, that's fixed," he said, yawning as he headed down into the sewer tunnel.

He looked so tired and I felt awful that I hadn't noticed. It's easy to ignore since he looks tired all the time. Then he said, "Well, if he turns back, then he's fixed. We'll see. He said he passed out on your roof and woke up twelve hours later and he was a human."

"You want to go somewhere? I mean, like a trip. Get away from the city and your horrible brothers?" I didn't even think about it first. It just came out.

He looked like he didn't think I was serious at first. "Like together? And alone?"

"Does that bother you?"

His caffeine kicked in again and he hopped up and down and splashed sewer water on my pants and said, "That would be cool! We should stay at a motel! I've never done that! I need to go to bed. I'm losing it."

So we're going to go on a road trip. Don't know where yet. Also we'll know tomorrow if Mikey's curse was lifted.


	62. Chapter 62

_Started with something, but thought I'd pay more attention to Don and Mikey because I tend not to spend so much time with them. Raph and Leo are just easier for me to get my head around. I don't know why a ninja would have trouble remembering how to tie their shoes, but I thought it was funny. I have bug fear and that fear extends to lobsters too. _

Dear Diary,

Me and Don are keeping the road trip quiet. We didn't agree to it, but it felt nice to have a little secret between us. He doesn't have many things to look forward to.

Splinter told him off when we got back to the lair. He left 12 strobes going in the lab and his father tried to retrieve his collection of moldy coffee cups and nearly had an aneurism. That's pretty bad when a legendary ninja nearly passes out from strobe exposure. Leo is writing that down in his book of tactics. Flashing lights = badness.

Mikey doesn't know what to do with himself and looks kind of nervous. I guess the transformation process might be really painful. Hopefully, he'll be unconscious.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey was in high spirits and acting cute to the max and Raph was being really obnoxious and yelling at him a lot. He wasn't doing anything but smiling and saying positive things. Mikey keeps saying he's going to reform. He'll be a new turtle. He said he would throw out his comics and skateboard and be more mature, but Leo pointed out that maturity has nothing do with comics and skateboarding. Leo took him aside and I think he was trying to encourage this newfound striving for maturity.

Some of their conversation was pretty funny because Mikey has this way of turning your most reasoned and "mature" speeches on their heads and pointing out just how full of ourselves we are. I think he might be the only one with any sense around here sometimes and we all just think we know what we're talking about. Leo said to him, "Now, I know that you have a problem with tact and if you are serious about improving yourself and being more mature, then you'll pay better mind to what you say."

Mikey thought for a second. "Yeah, but should I just say nothing? Is that better? I mean, if somebody asked for my opinion and I think something they don't like, then should I just say nothing?"

Leo twitched a little. "No, don't just stand there like an idiot. If somebody wants your advice, then tell them."

"I didn't mean that I would just stand there like I was deaf. How rude do you think I am? Have I ever stood there with my mouth slack when you asked for advice? But you just said that I should watch what I say. What if I honestly think something they don't like? Should I lie? Tell them what they want to here? Is that the _mature_ thing to do, Fearless?" He really leaned on the mature. Don was in the lab and I could see his shoulders shaking from repressed laughter.

"No, don't lie. Tell them what you think, but in a way that spares their feelings."

Mikey leaned on the wall. "Isn't that just being tactless in the first place? I'm still telling them what they want to hear. I'm just saying it in a really nice way."

Leo screwed up his face and then closed his eyes to do some kind of Zen anti-anger exercise. Mikey looked like it was a big waste of his time. "I don't think being a good friend means lying when it matters. I don't say everything. I know when you shouldn't tell people secret things."

Don yelled from the lab, "Nobody knows about Raph's sex change then."

Raph wasn't in earshot to pick up on the jab.

Leo just started in with another point of improvement. I think he'd been waiting for this day for years and had the list itemized. "And another thing. You need to listen more. You never listen."

"To who? You?"

"Me and everybody." I thought Leo was about to stamp his foot like a five year old.

Mikey was totally cool and said, "I listen. I listen to all sorts of stupid stuff you say. Yesterday you told me to put all the dirty bedding in that corner by the leg lamp and then it rained and they got all wet and you yelled at me because I didn't move them. Did you tell me to move them? I did exactly what you said."

Leo scoffed. "Being a mindful listener doesn't mean that you should mindlessly act on whatever anyone says. You need to use your common sense."

"I thought you said the other day that I shouldn't question your orders. Does that only apply to the battlefield? Am I free to question your orders when we're at home?"

"Ugh! No!"

"So you lied just now. I have to do everything you say and can't exercise my free will? Which is it?"

Leo looked like he was about to pull out his trump card. "And you have to stop stealing. There is no justification for that." I'm sure he wanted to say, "Get out of that one!"

Mikey sat on the floor to take off his shoes and socks. He still has trouble tying his shoes and I caught him singing that little bunny song every time he put his shoes on. He said, "Well, I'm not the only one who steals. You all steal. Even Master Splinter steals." He looked kind of blushy, like he had said something bad.

"Master Splinter would never steal! Why would you say that?" He was really pushing Leo's buttons.

"Because all garbage is technically property of the city and so in the eyes of the law, we steal every time we take stuff out of the garbage. So I'm no more a thief than the rest of us. And what about you ripping mp3s from YouTube? That's copyright infringement and that's considered stealing. And I won't even mention the stuff that Raph gets up to with Johnny No Thumbs. So I admit that I steal and that it's wrong, but no more than the rest of you."

I had a feeling that I should look sober for some reason, but I was smiling stupidly. Leo looked at me and said, "What do you think is so funny?"

I shrugged. Mumbled. He stormed off to the dojo. He came out in a few seconds and went to the lab. I could hear him going, "We're sparring now!"

Don had a circuit board in his hand and he went, "What? Now?"

"Now! Get in there!"

"Why?"

Mikey was still leaning on the wall and said to them, "Because Raph's not home and I'm too fragile to beat up."

Then Mikey decided that we needed a secret humans-only handshake. Okay, that was my idea. He was shirtless and wanted to be pants-less, but I told him that it wasn't a great idea. It's hard to keep him in clothes. I get why. Going naked your whole life and then suddenly being forced into clothes would be kind of like being clothed your whole life and then going naked.

* * *

Dear Diary,

A few hours after I got home, Don snuck in my window. When he comes over alone he tends to creep in and then stand there silently, looking awkward, until I see him and scream.

He was bloodied up and carrying some wilted flowers. "Thought I would give you some flowers for taking care of Mikey all that time. I know he can be a handful."

"He keeps me youthful. Actually, he said some stuff that I needed to hear. I didn't want to, but I needed it. He has a way of…" I couldn't figure out how to put it.

"Seeing the obvious that everybody wants to ignore? I get you. I think we need it. Actually, I think it's like he's the only one brave enough to say the embarrassing stuff that we don't want to talk about. Like when Raph had that weird rash on his thigh and wouldn't tell anybody and I probably should have kept that to myself just now…"

I took the flowers in the kitchen to put them in water and found a condolence card inside. "Sorry about your loss. Aunt Pat. I didn't know you had an Aunt Pat."

Awkward looks. "Oops. I got those out of the cemetery. Sorry."

"I figured. What happened to your face?"

"I have leprosy." He sounded annoyed. "I got in a fight on the way over."

I got out the first aid kit and he sat at the kitchen table. He watched me while I was cleaning the cuts on his head and face. He gets this look on his face sometimes. Like really wide-eyed, like I'm the most fascinating thing he's ever seen. Kind of looking up in adoration. Not the right word. Honestly, it's making me a little uncomfortable because it happens more and more lately. He's always done a lot of staring and when I first met them, it really creeped me out and put me off. I thought he had some kind of problem. He would hang back from the others and watch me. He used to follow me around and stare at whatever mundane thing I was doing and wouldn't say anything and would only get talkative when we were defusing bombs or decrypting stuff to save our hides. Guess that's part of being observant. The observation. But he grew on me after a while. But his expression now is more doe-eyed than curious.

"Got any ideas for our big trip?" I asked him. I hadn't been able to come up with anything. Where do you take a guy who can't go out in public?

"What about Niagara Falls? Oh, there's a new crop circle upstate."

Crop circle? That sounded cool. "We could pretend we're in 'Signs.'"

"Honestly, the journey will be the best part. I don't really care what we visit."

Like I said. Easy to please. I don't think I've ever met a 16 year old as easy to please as they are. Raph isn't too easy to please, but the other three are.

He didn't stick around too long. He looked so exhausted that I thought he would collapse on the way home. He talked about the New Madrid earthquakes in 1811 and didn't stop for breath or for a reaction from me and then said he had to go home before he fell asleep.

I fear he will grow up to be a very eccentric man.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Got a call from Don at 4am. Mikey's begun the transformation back to a turtle. Said that Mikey's unconscious, which is good because it's so disturbing to hear his bones cracking and flesh making noises as he changes that he would probably die from the pain. I asked Don if he needed help. Said no. Said it was too gross for anybody else to see and then said he'll have to stay up and watch him until it's over. Almost sounded like he was ready to cry.

* * *

Dear Diary,

The transformation is complete! Hurried over to see regular turtle Mikey and he ran out to meet me and spun me all around. He's bouncing all over the place. Leo looks like he's punch drunk. Raph's just playing it cool. Playing a video game and ignoring everybody. Master Splinter is being really gracious and wanted to have a formal sit down dinner. His sons did some obligatory groaning about it, but I think they just didn't want to look too eager to put on their Sunday manners.

I asked for Don and Leo motioned at the lab. He was asleep on the infirmary bed in the fetal position. Looked pretty sad. Especially since he fell asleep with a half full cup of something dark and caffeine filled. Raph said, "He fought until the end, but eventually he lost the battle."

I berated them for letting him sleep with a cup of coffee in his hands and went to take it away from him. Didn't remember his iron ninja grip and just managed to spill it on the mattress.

I sat on the couch and watched Raph killing imaginary people on the TV. Mikey approached and said, "Raph, Leo wants you to wash the dishes."

"Is that an order or generalized bitching?"

"Bitching, I think."

"Tell him I'm busy."

"LEO, RAPH SAYS HE'S BUSY!" I had to cover my ears.

Mikey left me alone with Raph and I was about to leave because I assumed he wasn't in the mood to talk and he said, "Thought I'd have to knock Don out to get him to sleep."

Good thing he fell asleep. He'd do it too.

He put down the controller and said, "So where are you and the resident genius going?" I pretended I didn't know what he was talking about. He got smirky and said, "He can't keep a secret for long, especially when he's loaded with drugs. So where are you going on this honeymoon? And how come we're not invited?"

I decided not to honor the honeymoon comment. "He's been under a lot of stress. I thought he could use getting away from you guys."

He put on this dramatic, cheesy hurt face and said, "Oh, I see. You two want to be alone."

"You're awful." I was getting a little uncomfortable with his insistence on his teasing. "We're going to see crop circles. Really romantic."

He shrugged and got up and stretched. "Maybe crop circles are romantic to him."

I was thinking something like, "Holy crap! Maybe they are!" But that momentary flare of irrational panic died down and I said, "Well, see if we bring you back a souvenir. No alien probes for you."

Then he did that gross thing where he tries not to laugh and snorts through his nose. Sounds like he's blowing his nose without a tissue.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey isn't cooking for once. He's the guest of honor and I'll never forget the look on his face when Don happily told him that we were all making him a huge dinner in his honor. He dropped his plastic Guitar Hero bass guitar and his mouth went open. Then he swallowed and said, "So you, Leo and Raph are cooking? What about Sensei and April?"

"Oh, I'll help." I wasn't going to let them poison me.

Don left the room and Mikey leaned over to me and said, "This is one of those moments when Leo's right. Saying nothing really is the best option."

So that's a start.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Okay, we're still all fighting about what to make. We asked Mikey and realized that he had little to no faith in us when he said that we should make him whatever we wanted to make. Raph said, "That means he thinks we can't do it and we need something easy to make."

We had a really long debate. Leo gave up red meat this month so we can't have beef. Then Don accused him of being a diva and trying to get attention by refusing to eat beef. Leo gave a longwinded reply about corn-fed cows and hormone injections and then finally admitted that he thought he was putting on weight.

Raph wants ham. He just keeps saying he likes ham.

Don doesn't want ham. Has something to do with the fat. He thinks it's too unhealthy. Now Leo's getting on him, like he's a hypocrite.

Suggested chicken. Raph says too cheap. Mikey can make chicken in his sleep. So Raph thinks this is like a competition where we have to outcook Mikey. I offered a turkey. Then Leo said a turkey would be good and they all acted like I would make it and they were about to go home. So I stood in front of the window and ordered them to sit down. Don looked a little upset by that.

Don wants to make those French's onions that look like snot. He and Raph are big fans.

Leo's going to make some kind of fancy-shmancy rice with almonds and water chestnuts. Wanted to make lobster. He's never had lobster. They all jumped right on that, so now we need lobsters. Turkey and lobster?

Don wants a bottle of wine. Thinks it will be classy to all have a glass of wine with dinner.

Turkey, lobster, water chestnuts and wine.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's making some kind of red wine sauce for the turkey, like I need them and liquor in the same kitchen. We're making it at my apartment because they don't want Mikey to see what we're doing. Master Splinter has promised to come by later in the morning and heckle our progress.

First, I had to get up at 6am and prep the turkey. I had an unwilling and grumbling crew, although the crew captain couldn't be woken up, so it was just me, Raph and Don.

Don was really eager to dip it in boiling oil or cook it in a George Forman grill or with some kind of noxious chemical, but I said it might affect the flavor. Didn't want to say that it might kill us all.

Raph was turning the thawed turkey over and over and then he told Don to pull out the giblets. He was all too eager to stick his hands in the anal cavity of a dead carcass and kept looking inside and going, "Oh, cool."

I read the cook book, which I got from my mother on my 18th birthday and hadn't taken out of the plastic yet, and read that we should rub the inside with salt. So I gave that job to Raph.

I said, "Make love to the turkey. Be gentle." I don't think I would have said that if I was really awake.

He did something weird in the turkey with his fingers. He made a face and said, "Ugh. It's cold."

I don't think any of us were at our mental best because Don said, "If that turkey was a woman she would have slapped you for that."

"I'm a good lover, remember?" Raph said in a kind of muffled with sleepiness voice.

So we realized that we didn't have the stuffing prepped. That was Leo's job. He'd done some katas and then gone to bed and forgot about it. Stupid Leo with his mixed up priorities to do his ninja training over cutting the celery. So we sat at the kitchen table and cut vegetables and the sun was coming up and Raph said, with his eyes half open, "Can't say I've ever cut onions during sunrise."

"I've been going to bed at 5am and getting up at 2pm lately, so I'm always awake for sunrise," Don said. "But I don't see the sun come up because I'm underground, you know."

Raph's eyes were watering. "What's the good of being awake when the sun's coming up if you don't see it? That's like does a tree falling in a forest make a sound."

"It makes a sound," Don said. His celery bits were perfectly square, which I still don't understand. "Nobody's there to hear it. The sound waves exist. And the sun exists. I'm just not there to see it."

I just listened. They're both the most withdrawn and bond over it sometimes. I didn't want to interrupt and break their stride.

Raph said, "Well, you're missing out then."

"I'll just look at a picture of the sun rising tomorrow morning, shall I?"

I took Raph's onions and dumped them into the stuffing bowl. Raph said, "That doesn't make any sense. You're up at sunrise and looking at pictures of it? Just go outside and look for yourself. It's better to go out and experience it than just sit somewhere reading about it."

Don said, "Will you be up tomorrow morning?"

Raph shrugged noncommittally.

"Come and get me then if you are and we can go up and look at it. Stand on the top of a building and wait to ascend to the mothership."

We made a crapload of stuffing because they were too busy talking to know that they'd made so much.

Then Mikey called just as we were trying to figure out what to do with the extra stuffing. Don made a gesture to me like I should ask and Raph shook his head no. Mikey psychically sensed our problem and said out of the blue, "If there's more stuffing than you can fit into the bird, then remember that you can make it externally. Just save some of the juice when you make the gravy and stick it on the stuffing. It'll have bird flavor then. Well, I'm not going to eat until it's done so I can have enough room. See you later."

I felt like yelling, "Don't hang up!"

So Don was about to stick the turkey into the oven when Raph said, "Wait a minute! What if that bird has some kind of bird flu! Should we give it one last salt rub? Doesn't salt purify things?"

Sounded good to us, so we pulled it back out and rubbed in more salt. Then we remembered that we hadn't put the stuffing in anyway and felt kind of dumb.

Leo shuffled out and said, "Oh, you're done?"

He ignored us as we stuffed the bird and he stuck some bread in the toaster. Then he had a tantrum because it wouldn't work. Leo tantrums are very calm and Zen. He just asks lots of existential questions to the thing that's annoying him. He was going, "Why aren't you working? Do toasters hate me? Why isn't this lever working?"

So he picked it up and banged it on the counter. I kindly reminded him, by slapping him, that it was mine. Then Don put it on the counter and pushed the bread in. He set the oven timer for one minute and then when it was done, he clapped twice and the bread flew out.

Raph said, "You hooked a clapper to her toaster?"

I was so enchanted by my clapper toaster that I made about a half loaf of toast. Leo pointed out that making mounds of toast wasn't helping with the meal at all.

I could only afford one small lobster and so they asked me to get oysters too. Don was holding the oysters and looking at his recipe. They insisted on fresh oysters. He said, "Can you imagine in Victorian times when housewives and servants had to do this much cooking every day?"

Raph pried one open and an oyster flew out onto the floor. "Yeah, but we'd be the lords of our manors and April would be the maid."

"Maybe I'd be lady of the manor? Ever think of that?" I flicked some butter in his face. He just licked it off.

Leo was inspecting an oyster for the point of least resistance. He said, "Aren't oysters an aphrodisiac?"

"You mean we'll all fall asleep?" Raph asked, sticking the raw oyster in his mouth that he'd picked up off the floor.

I thought that was funny since he'd made a big deal earlier about the bird flu thing. I said, "That's something that makes you feel sexy."

Don wrinkled up his nose and said, "Yeah, that would make a great family dinner."

I wasn't looking forward to the slaughter of the innocent lobster. But we had to get it done. Leo dragged out the crate. It was packed in ice and it was supposed to be alive inside. Apparently, you can't steam a dead lobster. We opened it up and couldn't tell if it was alive or dead. It was lying there and not moving. Me and Raph were kind of freaked out and he kept backing away slowly.

Leo said, "Somebody had better poke it in the eye to see if it's alive. That's what they said to do on the website."

"You do it," I said.

So he reached down and touched it on the eye. It twitched and moved its head. Raph yelped. "What's up, Butch?" Leo asked as he prodded it some more and got more movement from it.

"I think it looks like a bug," I said, trying to be subtle.

So Leo did what any self-respecting older brother would do. He picked it up and stuck it in Raph's face. Raph hid in the bathroom, cursing him with words that I will not bother to write down.

Leo ordered me to pull out the pot and then asked Don what to do. Don said, "I didn't look that up. I thought you were cooking the lobster."

"Well, what do we do? Just throw it in and turn on the heat?" he asked. He looked really weird because it was squirming in his hands.

"Throw it in? You cook it alive?" Don had sad face.

So now we're having a humanitarian debate on whether or not it is considered cruelty to animals to boil it alive. Donny contends that Mikey will really hate the idea and call Leo a murderer and has taken great strides to defend his ignorance on the subject of lobster preparation. Leo agrees, but contends that he could live with the title of murderer if he got to eat the little monster. So he intends to eat the whole thing himself.

Raph contends that he won't come out of the bathroom until its dead. I contend that he has to come out and check the turkey.

He came out, making sure to look away from the prisoner as he crossed the room. He figured out that the oven was on self-clean the whole time and the turkey was still as cold as when it went in.

So I just had to call Mikey and tell him to go ahead and eat because his lunch just became a dinner.


	63. Chapter 63

_I don't know about Splinter traveling in broad daylight. It doesn't feel right to me. But I realize that I had a hole there and kind of had to. I took me all day to come up with those two little lines of lyrics. I had the salt thing happen to me two years in a row._

Dear Diary,

Guess which little ninja has been taken hits off one of the wine bottles all morning.

Don was holding the lobster and saying, "We should set you free. Let you run free in Central Park. Be free, little lobster." He was cradling it and rocking it like a baby.

Leo was watching him, confused. "Are you okay?"

"I'm great!" He said that with a little more enthusiasm than was necessary. "I bet you can't balance the lobster on your head."

Then Raph pulled out the wine bottle he intended to use for his sauce and said, "Why is this half empty? Who's been drinking this?"

So then we knew.

Master Splinter came over as he had foretold and he was all wrapped up in a big brown coat with his tail tucked up inside. He actually didn't look too far from normal. He's the only one who feels confident enough in his ninja skills to sneak around in broad daylight. Don went right up to him and held up the lobster and said, "Isn't it beautiful, sensei! A true wonder of nature."

"Are you intoxicated, Donatello?"

"Maybe. I helped make the stuffing. You'll eat it right? Raph helped too, but I think it'll be okay. How's Mikey? Is he coming? I have to piss." He put the lobster on the table and went to the bathroom.

"One cook down," Raph said as he peaked in the oven again at the turkey. "Boy, I love that smell. Come here and smell that, sensei. I bet that's what heaven smells like."

Master Splinter smelled inside the oven as he was told. "It indeed smells good. Leonardo, what have you been working on?"

Leo was a little embarrassed and said, "Oh, well. I haven't helped that much. I've been trying to stay out the way, actually."

"He made toast," I said. "Look at my toaster! Isn't it the coolest?" Then I clapped him up some toast.

He munched on his toast and said, "I see Donatello has been spending his time wisely."

Later on in the day Leo still hadn't cooked his lobster. He was sitting at the kitchen table with a butter knife prodding it around, leaning his cheek in his hand. Don was sitting in the living room with Master Splinter babbling at him. He was playing loud club music in the living room. Nothing like Fatboy Slim to get your moving.

Or to get Raph annoyed. He and I were the only ones cooking now and he was grumbling and fretting a lot. Kind of scurrying from one dish to the other and muttering. I said to him, "Calm down. We won't give you away if it doesn't turn out."

Leo sighed and said, "Well, Mr. Lobster. I suppose your time has come."

"Thanks for helping out, Leo!" Raph said as he slammed the lid on the water chestnuts.

Don skipped over, waving his arms and said, "I want to give him one last look at the world before we boil him alive." As soon as Don left the area, Splinter turned off the CD and looked for something else to play. Don took the lobster off the table and held it out the window and said, "Here is your last look at the world, lobster. I'm sorry that we're killing you." Then he squealed and said, "Oh, lobster! Somebody go get him!"

He had dropped him out the window and he fell between the bars of the fire escape and onto the street. Raph looked out next to him, still holding a wooden spoon and said, "I don't think that's necessary. A truck just ran over him."

"I paid forty dollars for the lobster," I said. I was ready to smack Don around.

"He committed suicide!" he insisted. "It wasn't my fault! He jumped out of my hands. He must have known we were going to boil him!"

Leo was laughing at the table. Raph pushed the wooden spoon into Leo's hands and said, "You and the drunk can take over for a while. I'm taking a break."

I'll spare the rest of the details about the meal prep. But I had to take the bottle away from Don twice and I dropped the oysters on the floor. But they weren't cooked yet and we just washed them and pretended we didn't notice. Mikey showed up eventually towards four o'clock and it was good that the meal was done because Don was wasted. I was stirring something on the stove and he came up behind me and put his arms around my waist and leaned on my shoulder. Raph was giggling like an evil fiend.

"What are you laughing at?" I asked him.

He was carrying plates to the table and he said, "Just wondering what to get you guys for your wedding."

"Whose wedding?" Don asked into my shoulder.

"Nobody." I pushed him away and he tried to carry the glasses, but I told him to go sit down at the table and not touch anything.

Mikey was sitting in the place of honor and just watched us all as we waited on him hand and foot. He deserves it. He waits on us every day. Sometimes we treat him like Cinderella. Then we got settled down to eat and said to Leo, "Are you going to do the honors cutting the turkey? You should use a katana."

He looked at me like I'd just said something really dirty. He said, "No, I think Master Splinter should do that." He still has those funny no-humor moments.

Master Splinter cut the turkey and they were all about to just grab a piece like in those old Ma and Pa Kettle movies where all the kids reach onto the table, but I said, "We need to say grace first!" It looked and smelled just like Thanksgiving to me and it felt strange to eat without it.

They looked at each other awkwardly. I don't think any of them have ever prayed before. Don said, "I'll do it!"

Something thumped under the table and Don went, "Ouch, Raph!"

Leo stood up and said, "I'll do it." Then he just stared at me, awaiting instructions.

I reached out to take Raph and Don's hands because they were on either side of me and Raph went, "You mean we have to touch?"

I thought that was funny coming from guys who bathe together. But they all took each other's hands reluctantly. Master Splinter closed his eyes and bowed his head and they all copied him. Except Mikey, who was watching us all. He took the longest to shut his eyes.

I will never forget Leo's prayer. It was hilarious. I'm still torn because it doesn't feel right to find a prayer funny. But still. He goes, "Uh, dear God. We are gathered here today in Your sight and each others' sight obviously to say thank you for fixing Mikey and making him a turtle again. I don't know if you really care about that since we're made in the image of a turtle and not in Your image although I'm not sure exactly what part of Your image humans were made after. If it was because they're upright walking and use tools or because they can understand things better than animals, then we're in Your image too, I suppose. Thank you for keeping us alive this long and thank you for our friend April. Um… please send that poor lobster to heaven. That's all. Over and out. Amen."

Don's eyes were watering because he was drunk and also because he'd been trying not to laugh through the whole prayer. He grabbed the stuffing bowl and shoved it awkwardly at Mikey and said, "Eat this! I made it."

So Mikey obediently took a great big spoonful of stuffing and didn't even spoon it onto his plate. He just shoved it into his mouth. Then he choked and spat it out into his napkin.

"What? What's wrong with it?" Raph demanded.

Mikey said, "Salt. There's a big salt glob here."

And then Don had to helpfully say, "Raph did it when he raped the turkey."

Master Splinter demanded to know the meaning of that and he got a hasty explanation. "Do not use such language, Donatello."

We had a nice dinner. I don't think I've seen them eat so much before and they can eat a lot. Nobody much liked the oysters besides Leo and he ate about half a dozen.

Then we broke out the wine. Leo and Mikey passed, saying they were too full. So Raph had their portions and me and Splinter had a little, but not much. Raph was mildly buzzed, but it takes more than that to get to him.

Don was saying the most embarrassing stuff. I mean, he embarrassed Raph. He said to Leo, "You know, you ate all those oysters and in a while you'll probably be shpontaneously orgasming."

Leo looked like he wanted to smack him for it. Raph was happily cleaning the kitchen with Master Splinter. I could hear them clapping at the toaster again.

I sat with Mikey on the couch in an attempt to get away from the little drunken pervert and said, "How was the meal?"

"Oh, it was good. Not great. But you guys didn't really do anything badly. And I'm glad that you guys wanted to do it for me." He whispered in my ear. "Let's not let Donny drink again."

Don sat at the other end of the couch and curled up into a ball, hugging one of the end pillows. Mikey said, in a sing-song voice, "Sleepy Donny."

"Sleepy me," Don sung back.

Mikey patted his leg and said, "Sleepy Donny. So full of food and wine and empty of caffeine. You seem pretty happy. Talking about orgasms and stuff."

"Yeah, I feel good." He had a blissfully exhausted look on his face. I don't think he'll be so happy in the morning. "I'm going to sleep now. Goodnight, Mikey. Goodnight, my April."

"Maybe he'll shut up," Leo grumbled. He and Raph were trying to figure out what to do with the turkey carcass.

Raph said, "Let's put it on a stick and use it as a warning to the other turkeys. Shit, I need to go to bed." He put his head down on the table.

"Well, I'm not washing these dishes all alone," Leo said. He threw a dishtowel at him and it landed on his head. He didn't move it.

Master Splinter said, as he filled the dishwasher, "I would like you to come home and clean your rooms at your earliest convenience. At least those able to travel."

"I'm unable," Raph said into his arms.

Leo was showing off and running around the kitchen, obnoxiously full of energy. He had gotten up latest and hadn't drank anything and was trying to rub it in. "Maybe this would go faster if the lady of the house helped," he said into the living room.

Now he even bosses me around. But that's okay. I kind of like it. Makes me feel important.

After we got the dishes put away and cleaned, I could hear somebody strumming the guitar in the living room. Mikey was sitting at the opposite end of the couch from Donny and was serenading him. I recognized the tune and couldn't place it at first, but then I recalled that it was "We Love You, Birdie." It went:

"Oh, wake up, Donny. Please wake up soon.'

"You have to go home and clean your room.'

"If you don't do it, I'll sue.'

"Oh, Donny, wake up soon."

"I see they had their cuteness meds before they left home," I said to Leo. Raph was asleep at the table.

Sensei gathered up his able bodied sons, who only amounted to Leo and Mikey and went home. Mikey hugged me goodbye and said, "Thanks for doing this for me. And thanks for all you did before you know when…"

I just "pssht" it away. "I was glad to do it. There is no other ninja turned human that I would rather hang around with."

So I covered up Don. He was asleep with a little smile on his face. I felt bad that he would be hung-over in the morning. It would be his first hangover. He's growing up fast, I guess.

I was just going to leave Raph at the table because last time I tried to wake him up, he broke my nose. But he woke up as I went past and followed me into the bedroom. Going to bed now.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Went to bed with Raph as far away from me as he could get. Woke up with him sprawled all over me. Couldn't move him either because I was afraid he'd strangle me. He isn't a little pixie either and I was having a hard time getting back to sleep because he kept moving around. I think he was trying to sprawl over to the other side of the bed, but I was acting as a barrier. Plus, he was kicking me.

If only it had been Don or Leo. They smell relatively good. Raph just smells like sweat and mild body odor and motor oil. Ugh.

I decided to risk an attack and started poking him in the face. He mumbled a little and swatted me away. Then finally he opened his eyes and I said, "Get off me. Now!"

He blindly obeyed and flopped over in the other direction. Looked kind of dead. But I quickly realized that he was headed back in my direction so I got up and sat at the other end of the couch from Don and tried to sleep.

Now I'm listening to Don snoring and writing this instead of sleeping. He's so cute. Still kind of smiling. He must be having good dreams. Hope they aren't about me. Might try to sleep with Raph again if he's gotten to my side of the bed.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Finally did go back in the bedroom when he had traveled all the way to the other side of the bed. And they're always saying that Leo is the traveler.

Don's puking up his guts right now. Trying to think of where to take him on our trip.


	64. Chapter 64

_The mentioned song makes me think of Raph and Don chilling together and so it also reminds April. Mentioned lots of songs this time. I'll try to knock that off. I think I'm going to tie up my loose ends and then call April's Diary finished. Then I'll work on my other chapter stories that I have lying around unfinished. _

Dear Diary,

Hanging around with Raph and Don when they're both feeling mellow makes me feel like I'm in a Tom Petty song for some reason. I don't know why. I just keep hearing "You Don't Know How it Feels" in my head today. Don's hung over, but in between his puking he sits in the living room with Raph and they muse about life. I think they would make great stoners.

But their views on issues are very different and really amusing. Don was trying to explain something about the Federal Reserve and Raph said that they should be abolished and we should go back to a barter system. Raph insisted that people on the National Sex Offender Registry should be sterilized and Don said that they have the right to reproduce and some are only there for minor offenses like public urination. Raph said it didn't matter because it was worth neutering a few homeless guys and frat boys so that they could keep rapists from procreating.

Then I heard Don say, "I think it's 73."

Raph says, "I say 72."

Then Don got up and hobbled to the thermometer on the wall and said, "72." He pulled out a few dollars bills out of his belt and handed them Raph.

Then Mikey called, asking them both to come home because Leo was torturing him. He was making him clean and listen to creepy music.

They just figured out that "Happy Together" is by a band called The Turtles and they're both in the kitchen singing it at the top of their lungs. I don't know why they don't hang around with each other more. They get along so well. Eating cold turkey sandwiches now.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Master Splinter gathered us all together for a lecture, including me. He said, "It has come to my attention that you have all been drinking. Some of you heavily."

Don sank down in his seat.

I was about to blurt out that I'm an adult, but I held my tongue.

"You are ninja. Well, four of you are ninja. I expect you to always be diligent and prepared. Always be wary. Alcohol is a drug that clouds the mind and impairs judgment. You have all done things you regretted under its influence and I fear that if you continue in this way, that one of you may get hurt."

Mikey raised his hand tentatively. "I've never been drunk, Sensei."

"Yes, I remember that now."

Leo and Raph made quiet kissy noises at him.

Splinter said, "Stop that, you two. You are the worst offenders and have nothing to say. Raphael has been inebriated in public on numerous occasions and in front of humans, no less."

"I've always been careful…" he said, starting the excuses. "I know how to handle it. I mean, I have good control over it."

"No, you do not. You are too young. You are sixteen, if I must remind you. And you will not talk back to me and you will listen."

Shame face. "Yes, Sensei."

Then he turned to Leo, who looked like he was going to melt from guilt. "You are the one who should be the most ashamed. You are the leader and must strive to set an example for your brothers. And yet I hear that you are drinking at college parties and are found drugged in the bathtub of a stranger. How do you expect any of your brothers to respect you? This is behavior I might expect from an irresponsible human teenager. Not from a boy who is nearly a man, trained in the art of the ninja, the leader of a clan, no less. How do you expect your brothers to conduct themselves in the future without your good example?"

"I'm so sorry." He looked like he was about to cry. "That was a very stupid thing I did. I wasn't thinking."

"That is not any excuse and is less than an excuse. You cannot explain to an enemy that you simply were not thinking and that is why you are unable to win."

"Because you'll be dead," Mikey clarified.

"Oh, shut up!" Raph said. Grr. All defensive.

Master Splinter ignored the outburst because he moved on to Don. "Now, Donatello, I witnessed you intoxicated last night at the home of our friend and it disturbs me that you had so little sense. You were supposed to be helping them and instead were a burden."

"A burden?" he said confused. "I thought I did help."

"You dropped a forty dollar lobster out of a window," Master Splinter snarled at him. "How helpful was that?"

"Not much."

Everybody but Mikey was pretty ashamed of themselves.

Then he turned to me and said, "I know that I am not your father, April, but I must tell you this. I know that you sometimes drink heavily and that is up to you. You are a grown woman. But I know that sometimes you have brought my sons, namely Raphael, with you and I must remind you that they are only teenagers. They are barely more than children and have much to learn about life and are not as acquainted with the ways of the human world and their society as you are. I must ask that you put an end to this."

I gave Raph a sideways look and he looked away. I said, "You're right. And it's okay to give me advice. It's been on my mind lately too. It's just hard for me to remember sometimes that they aren't the same age as me."

"That is a complement, indeed, boys," he said, kind of smiling at them all. "You should take that away from this discussion. That is all I wanted to say. Now, would anyone care to join me in a card game?"

He was right. Of course. I can't remember him being wrong except when he kept insisting that the moon landing was faked.

Raph hurried away to the dojo. Leo lingered with me a minute like he wanted to say something, but he eventually wandered away. Don was still sitting on the couch with Mikey and he said to him, "Did I really act as foolish as everybody's making out?"

"Oh, yeah!" Mikey said. "You were acting like a real idiot. Want to play Hearts with Sensei?"

I'm taking Don on the trip tomorrow. We never settled on a destination. I guess we'll figure it out on the way.


	65. Chapter 65

_Boy, do I hate Gateways. The founder of the company might be governor of my state soon. If that happens, I feel like fleeing the state. I'm trying to bring a little bit of my techy game to Don, but I'm an English major. So I'm trying my best. I read somewhere that The Weekly World News shut down a few years ago. It was a bad year for Elvis, Nostradamus, the bat boy and sign language mermaid. I realize that I took a stance on cold-blooded vs. warm-blooded, but if they sweat than they are warm-blooded and I just can't see something that big and cold-blooded living long in New England. They also visit the Prague Zoo because that's the last zoo I visited. Thought I should deal with this dangling thread before the final jump into the ending. Which will probably cover 8 chapters. hehe_

Dear Diary,

I'll skip all the getting ready stuff and just say that we're on the road. Leo bugged us for travel plans and precise arrival times and I had a really hard time getting it through his head that the goal was to just roam around. Maybe head towards Niagara Falls or the crop circle. Maybe not. Just see what we see.

We're going to have to hide out in motels in the daytime. But we'll be able to amuse ourselves. Said he's teaching me some basic katas, if he needs to. It's his last line of defense against boredom. He goes through cycles of talking. He'll be quiet for over an hour and then talk himself out for a while. And he gets stuck on the same topics too.

"…and wouldn't it be creepy if the ground was shaking that much and you'd never felt an earthquake before and on top of that you have sand shooting out of the ground all over the place 100 feet in the air and then to see the lights coming out of the ground." He took a big gulp of air and was quiet. He started to talk again and I didn't expect it so soon. "I hope they don't screw around with my stuff in the lab. I have rather dangerous stuff in there. I wish I could have fixed that video camera before we left. I couldn't find the screw driver."

"Honey, it's on your belt." It was right there in plain sight. Blond moment.

He looked down and said, "Oh?" in mild surprise. Then he mumbled, "I should apologize to Mikey then. I jumped him because I thought he hid it. Wonder why he didn't tell me it was there. He must have seen it."

I think his brain is so full of information that there's no room for daily life stuff. I wish Raph hadn't made that stupid joke before we left. I keep imagining that Don's watching me while I'm driving and looking away when I look at him. It's making me paranoid.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Found a cheap motel and had to book a room with two twin beds because he refuses to share the bed. I know he's shared with his brothers; he just won't share with me. He never has, now that I think about it. I need to call Raph and yell at him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don snores.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Went to get some breakfast and came back and heard Mr. Genius playing in the bathtub and talking to himself. He was talking in different voices like he was different people. Kind of like when he and Mikey were making fun of the TV that time, but he was doing both voices. I can't think of any way to write it out except like this:

Butch Voice: Alright, bitch! This is your last chance. Where is the electromagnetic anti-matter ray gun? And where is the treatise that explains the impossibility of this instrument? I need to rewrite it so that my evil plan will look legitimate when my investors look for their money after my failure.

Girl Voice: Please, don't kill me! Don't you remember that I have radiation poisoning? If you let me, I could light you up in more ways than one.

Butch Voice: Quiet! I'm the bad guy here. Now come here, Madam Curie. I'm going to use you to power the ray gun, even though it is far less efficient than alternative energy sources. Propane prices were higher than I anticipated this quarter and I need to save money in another department. My accounting firm will be pleased. Muahahaha!

Girl Voice: I can't. I need to go listen to Paramore and complain about how nobody loves me.

Okay, I was laughing up until that point. I was wondering how the ninja hadn't heard me come in. I opened the door and he was sitting up in the bathtub with his hands behind him back.

"What are you hiding?"

"Nothing."

"Let's see it."

He pulled out a battered action figure and a Barbie doll that had green hair like somebody left it in a Chlorine filled pool for a week. I almost died laughing. He said, "I found them in the dresser, okay."

So Don spent his morning playing with Barbies. Ahahaha. Don told me that I just libeled him and that it was one Barbie. Now he says it isn't libel unless it's been published, so I'm forbidden from showing this to anybody because then he could sue me. Guess he read it in that law volume he has holding up his work bench.

Just watched the news. Looks like we're getting snow and it isn't even Thanksgiving yet.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We don't get very far because we have to lay low all day and then only travel at night, but he can only go out at night, so we only drive for about three hours. Today or last night or whatever we checked out the crop circle. Boy, was that a trip and half.

We had to drive out into the field down a two track and the van was bouncing around and it felt like we were doing something really dangerous. Then a deer ran across in front of me and I screamed and he tried not to laugh at my girly squealing. Hey, anything running through the headlights in the dark looks scary, okay. Especially when you're from the city and you only see deer in the zoo. Or when you're on a vacation with a bunch of teenage ninjas and they all kill a deer with their bare hands.

We got out and walked around the crop circle and he deduced that it was done with two guys and a board. Or something. And then he looked up at the sky and yelled, "Come back and get me! I'm one of you!" Then he explained at great length that crop circles are hoaxes and the precise methods and that we could do it ourselves in fifteen minutes if we wanted to. He was shivering and his teeth were chattering and I could see his breath. I asked, "Why are you shivering like that?"

He furrowed his brow and said, "Because it's near freezing and I'm naked."

So I threw him back in the van and started the heater. He saw a big metal irrigation structure and said, "Let's move it! Wouldn't that be a great prank? The farmer would come out here in the morning and go, "What the heck?'" It's so cute how he never swears unless he's showing off for Raph or Mikey.

We went past a smallish town and I went in to a late night second hand store and bought him a set of warm clothes. Got them all really big and baggy so he could be totally covered and he could go into a store with me. Got him a hat that covers his whole face and mittens and really huge boots. He's going to look gigantic. He had to triple tie the boots so they would stay on. They're big steel toed work boots. Says he feels like he's wearing lead on his feet.

Took him to Bestbuy. Looked like he would faint from happiness. We tried to walk really fast but his clunky boots tripped him up and he almost stumbled. That's pretty klutzy for a ninja. He went to the TV department and stared the screens for a while like he was in a hypnotic trance. Then he did this giddy little hopping dance and said, "Oh! Raph gave me money. I'm going to buy a game for Mikey."

So we went to the games and looked for a while and then he called Mikey and said, "If you could have any video game you wanted, what would it be?" Listened for a while, picked up a game, grimaced at the price and said, "If you could have any game under thirty dollars, what would it be?" Picked up a game and said, "Okay. See ya later."

It was a game about zombies. I said, "Like he needs more violence in his life."

Then we went to the computers so he could drool over them and pet the laptops. He's so funny. One of the guys asked if he could help him and he said, "This model is grossly overpriced. I mean, it's a Gateway."

Bestbuy Employee looked annoyed. "Well, it's lower than our competitor's prices."

"I mean, it's Windows 7 and only has 1 gigabyte memory? What's up with that? You're guaranteed to need an upgrade. Or else you'll get it home and right away put XP on it out of the box or Linux or something and then you've paid for the 7 and you won't use it." He said lots of other techy stuff too, but that was the only thing I remember because it was the only thing I understood.

Bestbuy Employee offered him a special 10% discount on it and he backed away and went, "I don't want to buy anything! I'm just looking."

"Then why did you argue with me for twenty minute?" Then he went up to a middle aged lady that he could trick into buying a computer. Don was unhappy for a few minutes. Then he found computer components and he was in bliss again. I think he would live here if he could.

Eventually, we had to leave because they closed. Went to an all-night grocery store to buy our lunch/ midnight snack or whatever it was. We don't have a way to heat anything, so we have to get stuff that we can eat cold or else straight from the package. I wanted to get McDonald's again, but he said he couldn't stand anymore grease. So instead we got lots of two liters of Dr. Pepper and potato chips. He did buy some vegetables, to be fair. He bought some gossip magazines and one of those tabloid papers saying that Elvis lives in Kalamazoo. Before we left, he got a cup of coffee and he couldn't pick it up because of his mittens and he was making this little frustrated grunting noises and he said to himself, "I'm a ninja. Really."

Gotta put the book down so I can drive again.

* * *

Dear Diary Belonging to April O'Neil:

The owner of this book is driving and so her turtle is going to write. We're headed towards a lake that I located on a map. It should be nearby. I told her what road to take, but her female sense of direction took her the wrong way. I am now having abuse heaped upon my head.

We're on a two-track. I've never been on a country two-track before. I wonder if we'll find a dead body. That would be so cool.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I should just shove my foot in my mouth and keep it there and never speak again.

* * *

Dear Diary,

What an awful day. Or twelve hours. My schedule is all backwards. We found the lake and we got out and walked along the bank. It was really nice. He was half dressed in his warm clothes because it was cold and we were the only ones around, so he didn't need to be totally covered. The water was all black and quietly rippling against the shore and the moon was reflecting in the water and if I describe it anymore it'll sound like we were walking around in the end of a tragic romance novel.

"It would be nice to swim," I said. "But it's too cold."

"It's not that cold," he said.

"You're just saying that because you're wearing warm clothes. You can't swim now."

So he right away took off his clothes and even took off all his gear and his bandanna and kind of made a deal about it. He said, "I'm amphibious remember. It doesn't matter how cold the water is."

"But you're warm blooded from the mutation right? Otherwise you would have frozen to death when it was sixty degrees."

He chose to ignore that, since he knows it better than any of us. And he knows that even if he were cold-blooded, it still would be a pretty stupid idea to go into the freezing water anyway. Then he stood there on the bank saying, "Here I go. I'm going. I'm going to swim and I'm going to have a fabulous time and you'll have to watch me and miss out."

So eventually he put a foot in the water and then yelped. But he pressed on, not showing a hint of pain or cold and actually got out in the water and swam around. I couldn't see him for a few minutes, so I went back to the van to get a blanket to bundle him up when he came back.

So he came out of the water after a while and he looked really cool. Kind of like in his natural state or something. But then he broke the spell because he went skipping out of the water going, "That was so cold! Keep me warm! I need your body heat."

I wrapped him up in the blanket with me and then I saw the same sappy look on his face that he had when I was cleaning his wounds. I blurted out the first thing that came into my head and I said, "You don't think this is more than it is, do you?"

I will never forget the look on his face. Pure shame. He wriggled out of the blanket and gathered up his things and went back to the van. I had this sick feeling like I'd just squeezed the life out of something. Like I felt kind of hot all over and nauseous.

I drove us for as long as I could stand because he had the radio up loud and kept looking out the window and didn't say a word the whole time. We got to a motel and the guy at the desk told me he only had one double bed. So that was the perfect end to a perfectly awful episode. I got back in the van and told him that there was only one bed and he fumbled around with the door handle like he couldn't find it. Then he walked behind the building and I think he went off into the trees and he hasn't been back for a few hours.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey just called me and didn't say hello or anything and started in with, "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY DONNY!" Then he yelled at me in Japanese for a while. Then he made me cry. When he finally wore himself out and he could hear me crying he said, "Sorry. I just had to listen to crying from Don for an hour. What did you guys do? I thought you were going to have fun."

I garbled something about how we were having fun and then I said that stupid thing to him. "It feels stupid that we're both so upset by it. I barely said anything."

He sighed into the receiver and said, "I think it's what you both know now. You know? Like you only had to say that little bit to put it in the open and everybody kind of knew it without saying it, but we could all pretend it wasn't happening if we were quiet about it. Saying it makes it officially true and might potentially lead to more talking about it." He really knows what he's talking about sometimes.

Don just came back.

* * *

Dear Diary,

He's asleep now. He spent a long time in the shower and then I watched TV while he read his magazine about the bat boy going to college. It was a fairly silent, tear filled evening. We had one of those talks that you never mention again. I don't think I'll write about it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I'm going to write about it because I have nothing to do but think about it and read about Paris Hilton's new haircut. I was watching TV and just when I had forgotten about the whole thing, he said out of nowhere, "Do you think badly of me now? I mean, are you mad?"

Took me too long to think of a response.

He went, "Oh." Pretended to read his magazine again.

I gathered my brain together and said, "No, not mad. It wasn't really… unexpected." He was looking really awkward now, so I said, "Don't worry. I'm not weird about it. I was sixteen too once, remember?"

"Does that mean that you think that I'm indiscriminate in my taste because I'm young?"

"No. Just…" Ugh. I had no clue what I was talking about and still don't really know what I was trying to say. "I know that everything seems kind of… grrr when you're that age because you don't know what'll happen to you and you don't know yourself very well…"

He was quiet for a couple of seconds and I thought maybe he was resolved or happy now and that I could go to bed and forget about it. Then he said, "That makes sense if you're a human and you can go to college and have some potential in the world as a functioning member of society. Want know what I'll be doing in ten years when I'm your age? I'll be living in a sewer with my father and three brothers and fixing that same toaster into infinity. Either that or I'll be there alone with Sensei because they're all moved away or dead. It's just…" His magazine drooped in his hand. "…it's nice to have something else to think about. Something else to look forward to or to at least pretend for a while. Like a 'what if I were normal' scenario. Is that bad? I should be more content. I know it. I'll have to meditate on it. That's the problem."

"You even angst weird," I said. I meant it as a complement.

That broke the tension a little. I didn't invite him onto the bed with me. It didn't feel right. I think they're getting too old for it anyway. So he slept on the floor.

As we were bedding down for the night he said, "Just to be clear, I don't think it's relevant what I think or feel about you. Just how I treat you. I feel that it's my business."

I was really surprised by that. I kind of nodded or something. Can't remember.

"It's my problem. It isn't anything you did. I'm glad you said it."

Decided to go to the zoo tomorrow. That'll be interesting.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Came back from the zoo. I feel like a five year old.

It's a good thing it was a cold day again because otherwise Don would have looked majorly weird in his get-up. We were walking around the zoo when we first got through the door and he said, "I admire the design of this place. It seeks to make you feel as though you're in the wild, while providing high priced snacks and sodas in plain sight. Only humans…"

"Like mutant turtles wouldn't do that if there were a whole race of you."

Oops. I said that really loudly and he looked all around at everybody. Thankfully, we're in American and nobody cares what anybody else says or does. "Well, even if the world were populated with you-know-whats, I don't think they'd clip the wings of Macaws so they could sit out in the public, pretending like you're looking at real Macaws in the wild."

He was pointing to a blue Macaw sitting on a small tree in the open. It hadn't occurred to me why it wasn't flying away. "That's a real Macaw."

We watched it uselessly flap its wings and then fall off the tree and land on the ground.

Then he went all five years old with me and forgot his statements of animal rights because he saw there were some horses that are the only in their species to be in captivity. I think there are only a few hundred left in Tibet. He was really excited. He said, "We could be some of the last people and you-know-whats to see these."

But we both loved the lemur house. They have this little glass house surrounded by a pond and the lemurs just run around free range. Free range lemurs. There was a bench on the path and one was just chilling there, asleep. Don wanted to pick it up and cuddle it, but I said it would bite him and he'd probably get tetanus. He agreed, but it's really hard for him to not touch things. He knows he shouldn't and all the risks, but he can't help it. He's too curious.

Then a penguin bit him. I still can't believe that. It was so funny. We went to the penguin house and this little girl whined at her mother because she wanted her to hold her up so she could reach in the tank and then Don reached over the glass barrier and one of them swam up and snapped on his hand. Thankfully it didn't take his mitten with it. He said it had quite a bite force and then complained that his mitten smelled like fish. The little girl laughed and her mother teased him. He said it was an important science experiment to prove that penguins like to eat mittens more than fish.

Then we saw the real you-know-whats. Well, they of the larger regular variety. They had a giant tortoise and two different kinds of giant turtles. One of them had its head on the ground and it looked like it was dead. He just watched them for a long time. We couldn't get close up to them. I noticed that he was listening to the comments people were making about them. Nobody hung around long because they don't do much. He said, "It's ironic that they're all complaining about how lazy turtles are when they have a very active specimen in front of them." I was shocked that he said it so openly, but then I saw that the lady next to me had heard him and was watching them to see which one he was talking about. Then he was smirky and pleased with himself.

For some reason they had some little mountain sheep in the same enclosure as naughty macaques and the macaques kept chasing them around and scaring them.

Then we went to the reptile house. I wondered what he would think. His first statement was that it was a pity Raph wasn't there because he would love the Madagascan cockroaches and stick bugs. I think "love" was an interesting way of putting it.

Then we saw them. A cage full of red-eared sliders. I said, "They're so cute! Look how tiny they are."

We both got up as close to the glass as possible. Don put his forehead on the window. He muttered, "Look at that one mugging up by the glass. Bet it's related to Mikey." He pulled out his phone and took a picture. Then a guard came along and kicked us out because we weren't allowed to take pictures.

Don was quiet for a while on the way back. We decided that we'd had enough fun/ angst for a while and that we should be getting home. Then he said, "Seeing those little guys puts in perspective. How far we've come, I mean. We were just like them once."

That's a scary thought for me and I can't really process it right now. I just can't visualize teeny-tiny Leo sunning on a rock when I've seen cut off a guy's head with a katana.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I got Don back to the lair and we were talking like normal and then it got quiet and awkward right when I was going to leave because I think he was thinking that he needed to apologize. Thankfully, Leo came along to help out and said, "How much money did you spend on him?"

Mikey said, "Why, Leo, are you jealous? Are we keeping track now? I demand that you spend exactly the same amount on all of us."

And then Raph came in the front door carrying a chain saw and a machete and our discussion was drawn in his direction, so Don was able to escape me without an awkward goodbye. That's probably for the best.

I notice that I'm running out of room in the diary. I don't know if I'll start a new one when I run out of pages. Maybe I'll find something else to with my spare time. Like a job.


	66. Chapter 66

_This is a little idea that I had just now. Not part of the epic finale, which I'm still sorting out. Decided at the last minute to give Raph a… special thing that he wants. Don can have a temper too, if he's pushed. At least I think so. Some will disagree, I guess. I just don't like seeing him be such a creampuff all the time._

Dear Diary,

I just said the words that I never thought would come out of my mouth.

"Mikey, come in here and unhook my bra!"

I'm getting fat. And it's ironic that I'm forcing Mike to take off my bra because it's stretching out and the hooks caught in the band and got stuck. He's the one who's done this to me. I blame him entirely.

I'm fat. Leo just told me so. He jumped in my window and saw that I was wearing sweat pants. Asked why or something.

I said, "I've got my period and I'm bloated."

He primmed up his nose a little and said. "I thought it was because you gained so much weight."

You'd think I'd scream at any male who told me I was fat. But he's right and as soon as he said it, I knew that it was true. I've gained fifteen pounds this year. I said, "Why do you guys eat Mikey's cooking and never gain any weight? I mean, you look great!" If Leo were a human, he would be in anatomy books. Funny how you don't notice that kind of thing until you're self conscious about your own physical failure.

He went all blushy and went, "Well, we work out every minute of the day, so…"

Now I sit here on the couch, fat. Next to an absolutely perfect physical specimen who eats the stuff I eat and actually manages to lose weight.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I have a new personal trainer named Leonardo. Sometimes Raphael if he decides he wants to make me hop around the dojo and stick me under his weights.

I can bench-press thirty pounds. Thought he'd laugh at me, but he looked really pitying. I don't think he knew it was possible to bench such a small amount.

"Why do you have to work out?" Don asked. He was sitting at the computer doing something that I couldn't identify. There were green and red arrows moving up and down and lines and numbers and stuff. "You look great."

Mikey scoffed. He mumbled to Leo, loud enough for me to hear, "Yeah, of course she looks great to him." They both snorted.

"I can't afford to grow out of my clothes." That's true. I can't afford new bras. I'm so broke. I can't afford to get fat.

"Just wear what you got," Raph said. "Who cares what other people think of how you dress. Bigger boobs are better anyway." Always the gentleman. I know he was trying to be encouraging, but still. He had to bring his weights into the living room so he could do curls and watch TV at the same time. It's like a combination of laziness and fitness. My kind of training regimen. He even had his feet on the coffee table and was eating chips with his free hand.

Master Splinter was sitting next to him and rolling his eyes. Raph said, "What? I'm doing it. What's your problem?"

I was shocked at the disrespectful language. But his tone said otherwise and his dad knew he was kidding, I guess, because he laughed. "My problem is the bad example you are setting for April."

"I sit on my backside enough as it is. Don't give me false hope that I can lose weight and watch TV at the same time."

Mikey was throwing stuff into a pot on the stove and he was baking at the same time. He poked himself in the stomach with a serving spoon and said, "I'm getting a little porky."

"Porky?" He looks nearly as perfect as Leo to me. Well, not really. He's small and wiry and muscular. But none of them look as good as Leo. Just saying. My extreme jealousy makes me sound like I'm in love with him. Leo, in case you ever read this, because I know you guys do, then I am not in love with you. And any other Hamato children reading this. I am not in love with any of you either. Sorry. I know you're all really disappointed.

Leo was looking at the ceiling and Raph looked up to, thinking he was looking at something specific. "I think I'd like to help both of you with your problem."

I was wary of that statement. "Our being fat problem?"

Mikey was holding up his serving spoon like a weapon. "I'm not fat!"

"A fat ninja?" Don asked himself as he clicked away at whatever he was doing.

Raph put down his barbell and said, "What you doing, Don? I want you to help me fix April's van."

Fix means tinker and break. At least when they "fix" things together. I'll probably be riding the bus for a week now.

"Just a minute. I have to change Euros into Mexican Pesos within ten minutes or I'll lose my money in GE."

We all ran to the computer to gawk at what he was doing. He invested money in the stock market somehow. "I'm going to try to make a living with it."

"How long have your investments been going?" Leo asked cautiously. I think it violated ninja secrecy to him in a weird ephemeral way. Whenever he gets on them about it I ask him if he's made out with strange women or been date rape drugged at a fraternity lately.

"How much have you made?" Raph on the other hand looked really thrilled at this idea.

"Only $13,500. I lost a bunch yesterday with General Mills."

"Buy me a motorcycle!" Raph said. I think it was an involuntary yell. Like a tick. He kind of yelled it out and looked like he was about to hop up and down.

"Sure, okay." Don was really gloating. "I'm going make a list of stuff that needs to be done around here and bills and debt."

I had to take a few steps away so they didn't see how embarrassed I was. They don't have debt. All debt is mine. Wait, now that I think of it, Raph has debt, but it's mob debt. So I don't know if he's obliged to pay it as long as he can willingly kill his debtors.

Leo was hanging back and had lecture face. "Is this money legitimate?"

"Yeah. I took the rest of Raph's money and opened up a…" I can't remember what he opened.

I expected Raph to have an outburst, but he slapped him on the shell and laughed.

So we all hopped up and down a lot and Don made a list that was about three pages long and said he'd have to prioritize it all. Naturally, Raph's motorcycle went to the top of the list because he was bouncing around and being so unnaturally happy that Don couldn't say no. Mikey had some demands, but he doesn't seem to be that thrown by it. He's pretty chill. Raph's acting like he needs Ritalin. Leo was busy writing something and I didn't know what it was. Turns out it was a diet plan for me and Mikey. Tomorrow is the first day of the new regimen. And then Raph's going to pick out a bike and I'm going to go buy it for him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Raph's sitting up in the living room. I'm trying to sleep in the lab and he's just wandering around and making lots of noise. RAPH, GO TO BED!

* * *

Dear Diary,

He picked out a… big surprise… sleek black bike with red racing stripes. I thought it was a little tacky for him to go with red, but he says he wants to coordinate. Leo had to kill his buzz and tell him he'll have to be all kitted up in civilian clothes and helmet whenever he's on it, so that he won't be seen and he was too happy to argue.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Just got back with the bike. I had to have them throw it in the back of the van, believe it or not. I have to admit. It is the coolest thing I've ever seen. Raph looks kind of delirious.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Oh, it's loud!

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don and Raph are taking my van apart and Raph's laughing like a bipolar person in a manic phase. Now my car is on blocks. Simple spark plug change. Sure.

* * *

Dear Diary,

We need to get something really super cool awesome for Master Splinter. Nothing is coming to us. Why does he have to be so content? Same with Leo and Mikey. Me, Raph and Don must be really materialistic because most of the stuff on the list is ours.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo just had me in the dojo all day. I now am lying on the couch while Don checks the stocks. Made $5,000 more today.

Mikey is whining. He doesn't care that he's getting a Wii. He hasn't been able to eat anything but rice and veggies and he's following Leo around and complaining. Says it's his fault if they all die from asphyxiation because he has so much gas from the raw vegetables. Leo said that he can digest them just fine. Mikey says that his argument makes no sense since they obviously have different intestines.

Leo made me work out with him and do this Yoga/ Tai Chi stuff. He looked much cooler than me. I think. I know he looked cool at least. That bastard.

Sore now. So very sore. When I have the strength, I'll murder Leo. Yeah. I'll be strong enough soon because he's working me hard. Butch is walking around now and I'm too tired to sit up and see him. He wants Leo to go for a ride. He just walked past in his motorcycle gear saying to him, "Come on! You can ride on the bitch seat!"

"No!"

Don muttered, "The pillion seat," under his breath, just now, as they were going past. He must know everything.

I wonder if he's running down foot ninjas with his bike now. That must be quite a sight. He has to wear this really goofy getup to keep all his green parts hidden. He looks like… I don't know what. He's wearing these Carhartt pants and a big coat and his helmet, which at least looks cool, and these big funky knitted gloves and Don's old boots that I bought. Looks like a big green scarecrow, if you ask me.

Now I'm eating my nutritious dinner of salad and applesauce. Eating what Leo eats. He eats like a rabbit. Actually, he goes through cycles of it. He starts freaking out that he's gaining weight and then puts himself on a supermodel diet for a few weeks and then eats like normal again.

What to get for Master Splinter. Hmmm. Nothing's come to us yet. We bought Mikey a bunch of games and comics and he's happy. Doesn't seem terribly personal though.

We're getting the coolest thing for Leo. This really expensive, super formal katana. Not a katana for use. It's an antique for show.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don squealed this morning and almost wet himself when he looked at the stock quotes this morning. Made $40,000 overnight.

Holy shit, Don spent $10,000 on that sword. I feel like we're going to be rich and we're all going crazy.

Lost two pounds. Only two pounds! I've been jumping around and sweating in the dojo for days. Two stupid pounds! I'm sick of spending all my time in the dojo watching Leo looking all fit and trim and perfect. I feel so fat in comparison. It does me no good looking at him all day. It just makes me infuriated with him.

We finished our exercises today and I collapsed on my face. Then he pulled out his katanas and did his daily katas. He hadn't even done those yet. The man's obsessed. Mikey offered to scrape me off the floor and I hobbled away to watch him playing with the Wii. He wanted me to play with him, but I can't move.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Heard Leo screaming in the other room like he was being murdered. I'm sure that's what everybody else thought because Splinter was in there before I had even registered that he was screaming. He came out of the bedroom with that sword that we had ordered for him. He hasn't said anything all day. He keeps staring at it.

We've been staring at the sword now for an hour. Had to go away and eat. Now we're staring again.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I knew this was all too good to be true. I lost five more pounds. But that isn't the bad thing.

Don's stocks all crashed. He sold them all off and lost over $50,000. He sold them when Raph was watching and telling him to sit on them and not do anything. They'll go back up, he said. I think this is a miracle. Raph advising caution and Don just panicking and selling. He did it so fast that we couldn't stop him. He said that he needed to cauterize the hemorrhaging.

So Raph knocked him right out of his chair and then Don got to his feet and they were screaming in each other's faces. I have never seen any of them fight like that. Leo doesn't scream back at him. I mean, he argues and usually ends up fighting with him. But not a full on aneurism screaming attack. Don can scream at people if he wants. But he doesn't. He has great potential for evil words, I mean.

I don't remember what they were yelling, but there was a lot of f-bomb usage from both of them and Mikey was trying to break it up and looking kind of scared. I think Don explodes once every five years. That's what Leo's saying. So he's really upset. I don't think he knows how to deal with fights with Raph that he isn't involved with. Mikey never fights back. He whines and complains, but he's too happy by nature to yell at people. Sure, they all say mean things sometimes, but he just doesn't fight. Maybe he does and I just haven't seen it.

So they stood a few inches away, screaming in each other's faces for a few minutes and then Raph pushed him and then they were really at it for a minute and Leo practically threw Raph across the room.

Then Raph took off. I think it instantly occurred to us all that giving Raph a bike was a really monumentally stupid idea because now he has a way to get further away from us when he takes off and to be gone indefinitely.

Then Leo threatened to sell his sword to make up part of the money that Don lost.

Wow, Splinter's not too happy. Incensed is a good word for it. Told Don to go do flips.

Now I have to go eat my orange and cottage cheese.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Mikey's so unhappy right now. He broke out a bunch of junk food and threw it at me. "Time for comfort eating," he said.

Leo said that he should go meditate if he's upset. Said that eating works better for him. Leo's in there meditating while Don does flips.

"Don should be happy," Mikey said, already finding a bright side. "It's a great accomplishment to lose that much money. At least we got to buy some stuff first. Wait! We never got anything for Master Splinter!"

"I'll definitely sell the sword then," Leo said. He had given up on meditating because Don's aggressive flip noises were distracting. "Want to go sit by it again?"

So we had a fattening meal by the sword. Poor Leo. He only got to keep it for one day. I do feel kind of bad for Raph, I guess. Don did use his money without permission and then lost all of it. But at least he got something out of it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I've been here for a week straight. Is my van still up on blocks?


	67. Chapter 67

_The stripping thing was a little over the top, but it made me laugh. That's usually my justification for anything weird. I'm going to start in with the epic finale next._

Dear Diary,

Raph came home later today. Didn't stay out for two weeks like we thought. The bike may turn out to be a blessing. It seems that a long ride on the bike exercises out his wanderlust faster than actual wandering. He just needs a ride at high speeds by himself.

He came in earlier and Don was in the living room and saw him. Leo needs to take notes on how he handles Raph.

Raph saw Don and stopped. Defensive body language. He said, "Don't worry. I got a buyer lined up for the bike. Happy?"

"Happy? Don't sell the bike! You love it! And it's your money."

Leo was chewing off his tongue in the kitchen.

"You're fucking right; it was my money."

Quiet and tense for a second. Don said, "You're right. I'm really sorry. That was stupid of me to sell all that off. You were right. But don't sell the bike. We'll come up with money somehow."

Now if Leo had been giving this speech it would have gone something like, "You were riding around on that noisy thing where people could have seen you? You are so irresponsible! It would be stupid to hold on to stocks when they could have gone down and we could have lost who knows how much money! Can't you think of your family's wellbeing over your own selfishness! If I have to sell my sword, then you should sell your bike!" Or a slightly more mature rendition of that song.

But Don finished with, "And I didn't have a right to yell. I should have listened in the first place."

Raph just looked at the ground and nodded a little.

Don finished with, "How's the exhaust? Do you want to help me check it out? Hold on a sec. I'll get my tools. Take off your clothes."

I'm used to being the only one wearing clothes besides Master Splinter and opened my mouth to tell him off and then remembered that Raph was fully clothed for once. Mikey was playing a video game and whistled suggestively at Raph. He muttered something back in Japanese and Mikey's eyes bugged out. Leo laughed really hard in the kitchen. Raph started pulling off his coat and Mikey yelled, "Wait! Wait!" Then he ran to the computer while Raph stood there, watching him curiously.

Mikey played some strip tease music.

That was hilarious. And Raph was in a much better mood now, so he played along and did a full pretend strip tease, which was really funny in an equally disturbing way. He hit me in the face with one of his gloves. He kicked his pants onto Mikey's head and said, "I think I deserve a few singles for that." So it was nice to have him in a good mood again. Mikey was flat on his stomach on the floor by the end. With Raph's pants on his head.

I could hear Leo in the kitchen going, "It was nice knowing you, antique katana. I hope Wendell Johnson of Kansas City takes good care of you."

Don comes out of the lab with his tools and sees Mikey laughing on the floor and hears the stripper music and goes, "Okaaay."

"Nice technique," I said. "But I've seen better."

It'll be awesome if the bike keeps him in a better mood. It would also be awesome if he didn't get killed while riding it. Both together would be awesome.

Leo passed us on the way to the bathroom and had to stop and stick a dollar bill in Raph's belt as he passed. "Buy yourself something nice, Raph," he mumbled as he shut the door.

"With one buck! Cheapskate!"

Don and Raph went out to do a checkup on the bike. Me and Mikey are alone with the Diet Dictator now, who just came out of the bathroom. We're afraid he'll make us exercise.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I have not the strength to write. Help.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo worked us until we collapsed. Said we had to make up for our pity dinner. I hate him so much. I was ready to feel sorry for him having to sell his katana on eBay, but he made a profit and then he made me do chin ups until I threatened to throw up on him. He said I was doing it wrong and made me get down and showed me the "proper" way to do it. Looking all perfect with his biceps and stuff. Then I got back up on the bar and hung there.

Mikey said that he was going to cry if Leo didn't let him go to bed. He can cry on demand and Leo took the threat seriously and let us go.

But Leo took us into the kitchen and made us both warm milk and said that we would sleep really well tonight. Really smirky and condescending. Said he wants to be the first to feel my abs. Said I would slap him if he tried.

Mikey fell asleep at the table with his milk in his hand. Really cute. He tries to be mature lately, but he can't stop being cute. He'll be a cute, mature adult, I guess.

Weighed myself just now. I actually gained a pound. Thinking about crying now.


	68. Chapter 68

_I'm in the mood for an April's Diary episode, but I've lost my color coded epic ending outline. So I'm going to post this at the end and then move it back before the finale chapters after two weeks or so. Hope that makes sense to everybody. I used to be a Sims 3 player and I used this patch. This is just kind of post-finals ranting. It might only be funny if you play the Sims or something._

Dear Diary,

I bought The Sims 3 for the boys. Mikey said it looked fun. Boy, that was an understatement. They're obsessed. All four of them. Even Splinter plays sometimes. His neighborhood looks like an utopia. All the people are good looking and the children are well behaved and have nice Japanese names. I want to live in Splinter's city.

I don't have a city. I just watch them and listen to the hilarious commentary. Raph's neighborhood is pretty nuts. He made all four of his brothers, me and Master Splinter, but he forgot to make us all related and now he's married to Leo and Don's married to Mikey. He tried to break them all up by making his sim Raph act like a bastard and slap Leo around. He had a negative 100 relationship with him and then they broke up, but Leo left him for Splinter. He was really pissed and started over. So now he's redesigning his family.

Don got this glorious patch where we don't even have to play. Part of the fun is sitting back and watching the chaos. He has it set so that we can name the babies that are born. Mikey's kids in Don's neighborhood are named Lazy and Slobby Hamato. Raph isn't married. Don is a super scientist. Can't remember. I think Leo died in a house fire early on. He sends them to the cemetery once and while for a family mourn fest. Takes pictures of Leo's ghost scaring them all and puts it on the desktop.

Leo's neighborhood is full of celebrities. His neighborhood has some epic craziness going on because he collaborated with Mikey. They're sharing a neighborhood, I guess. Raph was married to Megan Fox and then she left him for Mikey and now he's married to Rihanna, but he just knocked up Megan Fox Hamato. I just heard the shouts of amusement and Raph's grumbling. Said he wants Megan Fox back. Sim Raph has eight kids with six different sims. Keeps knocking up married women.

I'm married to Han Solo.

Mikey just said, "Oops. Han Solo just died. You're on the market again, April. Boy, you had some ugly kids. May's super ugly."

"They take after Han," Leo said. "You made him look really bizarre. I think we should have downloaded a Han. They look so much better than the ones you make."

"Don't knock my mad skills. Is Raph slapping Megan Fox around again? Who's that in the red by the bookstore?"

Pause as Leo clicked around. "No, that's Freddy Krueger slapping Megan around. He hates her too. I guess it's on behalf of his father or something."

Raph finds his awful sim pretty entertaining and wandered in to see what kind of trouble his little electronic bastard was getting up to. "Where am I?"

"You're visiting me. Look at that. Hey, I thought you were a doctor. You lost your job again. Tell him to get to work," Leo said. "Raph keeps hanging around at people's houses and won't go to work."

Mikey said, "Why are Cornflower and Rainbow still toddlers when Iris was born at the same time and she's a teenager?"

"Get off so I can get stuff for my sims." Raph keeps making his sims and then deleting them to make them look cooler. He doesn't do much playing. He has the sexiest women on the face of the earth in his town. "Hey, why am I still living in that little shack with the junk in the front yard? Looks like a Hobbit landfill."

I went in the lab. It was too funny to listen to and I had to see it for myself.

Mikey was sitting at the computer while Leo and Raph stood behind him watching. He was following Raph around, who was riding a bike. "Well, there's a lot of user stuff in there because we downloaded it. So it really has a high property value and we cheated you up so you had lots of money because all you do is lose your job and fight with your wives. I moved you into that Victorian across the road, but you keep moving back. Hey, look Leo. Madonna died. That's sad. You're a widower."

"Aw, man." Leo brushed him aside and took the driver's seat. "Wonder what… I'm already dating Marilyn Monroe. That's crazy. The dust hasn't even settled yet."

I had to say, "Poor little Spike, Banana and Ninja don't have a mother." Mikey named his kids while he was in the bathroom.

My sim ended up married to Edward Cullen. I think Raph's kid Freddy Krueger married Megan Fox. Raph yelled about that.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I did something really dumb. I bought them that expansion pack where you can go on adventures in foreign lands and make your sim into a ninja. So now there's this race to see who can make their sim into a black belt the fastest.

Raph took over ownership of his little bastard Freddy Krueger Hamato because Raph died of old age and Leo was playing as his daughter Ninja because she had the most personality traits like him. He had to change all their traits around when he realized that they had a "disciplined" trait available with the expansion pack.

Don made a Buffy sim in that neighborhood and she's trying to fight Raph's kids whenever she meets them on street. It's really funny. Mikey hasn't been bothering with it. He's been trying to get one of his daughters married so that he'll have grandchildren. Keeps saying it isn't fair that Raph has 19 grandchildren and his kids are celibate.

Don is using this cheat where Buffy and Dawn are training 24 hours a day. He built a dojo on the front lawn. Dawn just married Jigsaw Hamato, another of Raph's sons and he's training out there with them too.

I sent my grandson Sam Jackman to China to learn kung fu or whatever it is and he spent all his time reading about how to make Dim Sum, so I sent him home. I'm not very good at this game because I don't know the cheats that they're using.

Buffy just became a black belt.

Mikey said that Milton Hunkazoid must be gay because he doesn't want any of his beautiful daughters. So he cheated and had Rainbow adopt a baby on her own and now she's a single mother to little Blinky. He made another guy named Jason Velociraptor to marry one of his kids. But they're all old women now. Mikey finally shuffled off from old age.

Sim Splinter has had a very interesting history. He married Lady Gaga and they had a kid named Tomato Hamato. Then the kid turned into the town brat. Kept going around fighting Leo's kids in particular. Then Lady Gaga left him for Raph and he was alone with Tomato for a long time until he married Elvira and they had a whole raft load of kids. But there was a glitch when Don was reconfiguring his patch and they all left town together. So they were deleted and Don forgot to summon them back or undelete them or whatever. Then Splinter died mysteriously. He was still young and when Leo went to his house, he was dead for no reason. Then he had Elvira take his ashes to the science lab and he was brought back as a ghost. So now Splinter is immortal. He's on to his 9th wife and has a few little immortal ghost babies. Makes it hard to play him because there are six babies in that house and they don't grow up.

Splinter just complained that they forgot to try to make Tomato into a ninja and he was resentful. Leo apologized, thinking he was serious and went to search out Tomato. He was homeless and the game was just shunting him from house to house and he was living with Buffy for some reason. He sent him off to China to be ninja'ed, but he ran out of money before he could get to the training place. Then he died of old age as soon as he got home. And thus ended Splinter's line, unless you count all his immortal ghost babies who can't grow up.

The neighborhood is overrun with descendants of Raph. And they're all evil, hot-headed, mean and neurotic. So they all just attack each other. Raph complained that he didn't think it was a very accurate reflection of his more positive traits, but watching them all bitching at each other is pretty funny. Except for this one guy who's a vegetarian coward. Raph keeps saying, "Yeah, I thought there was something funny going on between Milla Jovovich and the mailman when I was off in France that time."

Interesting problem that had us all laughing. They have so many descendants now, well Raph and Leo and me, that all the kids get trapped at that portal in front of the school and they are all queued up to go in, but it takes so long that they drop it out of their queue and then stand in front of the school, playing hooky and wetting themselves. That was hilarious. Well, Raph wasn't too happy because more than half were his and he said that his family was going to turn into a bunch of ignorant dropouts.

Leo's panicking now, trying to get all his grandchildren on the honor roll. Don put in two more schools and assigned them all to one. I love that patch.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Splinter threatened to take the game away if they didn't quit playing so much. Back to them all being real ninjas.


	69. Chapter 69

_Thought I'd have Leo write in April's Diary for some reason. Kid thinks about sex more than I thought. Hehe. Again, I'll shuffle these in front of the EPIC FINALE when I get the EPIC OUTLINE rewritten. I submit that Leo really can cook if he wants to. He's just too lazy and out of practice. I think I'll change the chapter order around after the end of the finale so that I only have to do it once._

Dear Diary,

Leo decided to be a big green smartass and wrote this gem. I can only assume that he meant to tear the page out because he wrote some shocking things.

I see that April has written volumes about us. She left her diary in the lair yesterday and I have decided to write an entry now.

I woke up early this morning, which was miraculous because I went to bed at 11pm. I tried to rouse Raph. I rolled him out of his bed, but he didn't even wake up. I decided that if he's that tired, he needs his sleep. I wonder what he was doing up so late. Maybe I'm better off not knowing.

Mikey and Don slept over at April's. They have these little sleepovers. It's very cute. I don't feel comfortable sleeping over there anymore. I was invited, but I didn't want to go.

Master Splinter is now awake and preparing my breakfast. I am so grateful that he doesn't let me starve to death.

He just snapped at me. I told him to brush himself before getting into the shower because someone has been leaving brown hair in the drain. I told him that maybe I'm mistaken and its mine.

Raph is now leaving again. I told him that he should stay and train. I wish he would stay. Now I have to train alone all day. But Sensei will be here. So that's all right.

Now he won't. He's going out on a "junk run" that I'm forbidden from attending, which means that he's going out to get our Christmas presents. I have thousands of dollars from the proceeds of that katana and I need to get everyone stunningly awesome amazing presents. So no pressure on me.

Raph is leaving. I told him not to speed. He told me to fuck off. I wish he wouldn't leave so early in the morning. It's icy out today and they haven't salted the roads yet.

At least I'm alone now and I can listen to Faithless. I love Maxi Jazz's voice. I try to imitate him sometimes when I'm trying to get favors out of April. That's how I "seduced" that woman at the club. I wonder what she's doing now. I think she was married. She was wearing a wedding band anyway.

Well, it is now 9am and I have meditated for two hours. I'm in a really good mood and I wish Raph was still here so I could be unusually nice to him. Or that Mikey was here so I could be unusually patient with him. Alas, my virtue is wasted.

My Windows Live Messenger keeps lying to me and telling me that I have an email and then I open it and there's nothing in my inbox. It's really pissing me off. Gets me all excited.

Maybe I should get GLEE on Netflix. I don't know.

I'm now listening to ATB while I clean. I like him. I'm watching that video where the girls make out in their underwear. Good song. Girls rolling around in underwear a plus.

I should do some katas. It's noon. When is Raph getting back?

I just called April and she wants me to come over. I said that I'm about to work out and can't make it.

Now I need to make sure I know when someone is coming so I can turn off this music before they get here. But I have it so loud that they'll hear it anyway. Now I have to make my own lunch. Screw it. I'll just make Ramen soup.

I wish I could go to a rave.

Need to work out now.

Need to shower now. That was good. I couldn't get that flip yesterday because Don kept hooking me. I can't claim that I've mastered it until I can do it without outside interference.

Calling Raph now. It's 3pm for crying out loud. No answer. What a shock.

I wonder what they're doing at April's right now. Maybe I should go over there.

The Puerile and the Fidgety had some weird shit today. I use the word shit only when the shit mentioned is weird enough to deserve it. Ford was frozen in a block of ice under the hospital and Sasha just thawed him out. Guess he was cryogenically frozen from the 80s. And he's walking around with his eyes popping out like a crack head. I should quit watching this. What a waste of time.

So Dimitri and Trisha finally had sex. Cue the kinky music. Hey, I have that album. Boy, she looks really thin. Like unhealthy thin. I hope that she's not anorexic. That would be so sad. If I were the actor, I would be seriously concerned about breaking that poor girl.

Ugh. Don, stop putting empty ice cream boxes and napkins in the dirty dishwater. It's so disgusting.

April sent me a Facebook message. What should I say?

You know, I could kick Dimitri's ass. Just saying.

She asked what I'm doing that's so important that I can't come over. On soap operas they always leave their bras on during sex. I would whip the thing right off. If she wanted to of course. I wouldn't touch it if she didn't want it off. But bras look so uncomfortable by nature. I would think she'd be glad to get it off.

I really need to take these pages out when I give it back. I'll say they disappeared.

Uh, oh. It looks like Trisha' ex just escaped from prison. Or else they recast Jason as some new guy. Yeah, looks like. I hate that. Just let him play Jason again. It isn't like he's around. He's in Spain running the Madrid branch of Jones Inc.

What would happen if I lifted twenty more pounds tomorrow? I don't know if I want to risk it today without a spotter.

I should bathe before someone gets home. I just saw an ad for Outback Steakhouse. We have steaks, but I can't cook them.

I just broke the coffee pot. I don't know my own strength. I do know it, but I forgot. I wish Don was here. I want coffee.

Listening to Florence + the Machine. Now I'm going to lie on the couch and eat M&Ms and watch The Cosby Show. Theo reminds me of Mikey a little bit.

Can't listen to Flo and watch Bill at the same time. Must choose. I choose Flo.

What should I do with these clothes that Mikey wore when he was human? They don't fit him anymore. Maybe I should save them in case any of us get turned into humans again. Maybe I should go piss off Queen Marie, get turned into a human, get on a plane to England and then propose marriage to Flo Walsh. Sounds like a plan. Maybe I should sneak into one of their concerts when they stop by. I wish Swimming was available in iTunes. I don't want to buy that other one off the Twilight soundtrack. It sucks that I have to buy the whole thing just to get that stupid song. I have some money now so maybe I'll just do it.

I'm not going to clean anymore. I don't know where any of this stuff goes.

I never answered April. What do I say? "I'm cleaning house like an old woman."

Just told her I was doing chores. No sense lying.

Raph's over there. I can't believe that. He'd rather go hang around with them instead of me, I suppose.

Sing it, Flo.

I need to oil my katanas. I hope that isn't a rust spot. Is that rust? I can't believe that. Rust. I'll have to treat that.

Okay, I'm going over to April's. She called and said that they all miss me. I think she's exaggerating and she just pities me. I'm known as Mr. Killjoy. I could hear Mikey saying, "Don't invite Mr. Killjoy," in the background.

I just won't say anything. I'll be cool and do whatever stupid thing they want. I think I'm going to watch that ATB video again before I leave. No, I'll watch something different. I already watched that one. Maybe I shouldn't watch something with girls in it because April can always tell. I just listened to Dirty Talk. That song by Wynter Gordon. I can't listen to that when anybody else is home and somebody's always here. I have it on my iPod, but I know that Don looks through my songs and he always makes comments about it.

Is it cold? What does Weatherbug say? Not… well that's cold enough. I'll wear a coat. I'll bring the diary and maybe write a little in it.

* * *

Dear Diary,

He showed up an hour after I called with is "just looked at porn" face. He's right. I can tell. It's so cute. Then he whined because Raph was gone all day and didn't call him back.

I don't get why he was sitting at home alone if he was so lonely. It isn't like we hate him. I'm also disturbed that he suddenly likes human women so much. He just said that it's the sexy content and not necessarily the physicality of the participants. Okay. That's really creepy.

Raph says he's into human/ turtle bestiality.

I want to talk about something else now. Told them all to help me clean my bedroom.

Set Raph to cleaning my room as a punishment for embarrassing Leo. He's sitting around with his nose in the air and a red face. So full of dignity.

Raph doesn't clean very efficiently. He keeps playing with everything he finds. Mikey's the same. He keeps putting my shoes on his hands and pretending to be a robot and stuff. Raph's going through a box of letters that I got from an old boyfriend in high school. Keeps reading bits out loud and saying he could write better love letters. Yeah, sure. I finally took them away from him when he laughed because he had called me a milky white goddess of the lilies. He cackled out loud. Raph has this loud kind of bark-laugh. It echoes all over the apartment. Mikey brays like a mule. I must be in a bad mood. Normally, I don't mind how they laugh.

Mikey found a wrapped up tampon and didn't know what it was and asked if it was a candy bar at first and then screamed like a girl and threw it at me when he figured it out. Raph's lying on the floor on his face in hysterics.

I should have asked Don to help. But he's doing my homework. He likes it.

At least I thought he was doing my homework. He and Leo were playing the "narrate the TV on mute" game. I heard Don doing it, but I thought Fearless would be too uptight to do anything so childish.

Okay, that was seriously hilarious.

They were watching this cheap action-fantasy show and there was a girl dressed like an elf or a witch and she was standing around in the woods and the camera was waving around, trying to make her look creepy. And there was a huge knight, with his sword drawn.

The knight spoke and Leo said, in a very good English accent, "Excuse me, miss. I'm on my way to the border to pick up my order of anabolic steroids. Do you think these pecks are natural?"

Don said, in his squeaky girl voice, "No, I can't let you go through. I'm the queen there, see. I totally want your body. I stand here looking threatening when I feel sexy. Come into my cloak of darkness and make love to me, Mr. Knighty Knight."

Leo choked down a laugh before he said, "I can't. I have sworn allegiance to the god of Sexual Frustration. And now I must use my rubber sword to scare you away. I haven't been allowed to carry a real one since that time I spent a few weeks in the asylum."

Then the cloaked girl stepped up to the knight and started feeling on him and Leo said, in his normal voice, "Deal with that, chump."

Don said, "I am the god of Sexual Frustration! This is a test! Had this been a real seduction, I would have magicked all your clothes off by now."

I kind of dig Leo's accent. He said, "I must admit that I find you seductive, in an evil kind of way. Evil has that effect on me. I take on its flavor like old fish left in the ice box too long. Now, lie with me, evil maiden!"

As if on cue, Knight and Maiden made out wildly. They both high fived.

And believe it or not Raph and Mikey were in my bedroom singing "Flagpole Sitta" and jumping up and down and playing air guitar and jumping on my bed and flipping around and acting like two lunatics. Okay, I was doing it too. It was pretty nuts. They make me a child again. I'm grateful for it.

I just want them all to go home. Mikey just smashed a plate. Leo's yelling at them.

They are gone. Thank goodness.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Boy, it's quiet.


	70. Chapter 70

_I had a grand adventure today and bought a cooking pot. Wondered how Raph would deal with it. I don't know why it suddenly struck me that he might like Raymond Carver. There's a mundane challenge at SS. And I guess this is my Raph being mundane entry._

Dear Diary,

I noticed that my one cooking pot had a hole in the Teflon. Well, Raph noticed. I said I had to leave him alone and go Wal-Mart and get a new one so we could eat lunch, unless he wanted to fry something. But even then, I'd need to get another one eventually when I wanted to boil something.

He wanted to go with me. To Wal-Mart. I've only been with them once in a Wal-Mart and we were kicked out. So I said no because of ninja secrecy and shopping with Raph sounds stressful. So he got all dressed up in his ski-mask and mittens and stuff that he wears in the winter. He looks like a little kid. It's so cute. Only one that goes, "Fuck, my mittens caught on my sai." We need a swear jar for that one.

He can't ride the motorcycle in the winter. He's afraid of rust. So we drove the van down to Wal-Mart. He saw the Subway in the store and right away declared that we were eating subs when we got done with our shopping. He's so domineering sometimes. I think it's an illusion though. I told him we were buying a pot and taking it home and then he was going to make lunch for us and he just agreed. If he were married, he'd be whipped. At least if he were married to me. If he were married to Leo, he'd be divorced by now. What am I saying? It does seem like they're an old married couple sometimes. I wish Robyn and I were that close. I haven't spoken to her in so long. I should buy her something really nice for Christmas to make up for it. Don thinks I should go visit her. Mikey even said I should invite her over and introduce them to her. I said, "NO!" Being really subtle.

I watched Raph swaggering around Wal-Mart, covered from head to toe and laughing at him and thinking. Was it right to replace Robyn with them? I mean, was it bad? Should I feel guilty? Did she replace me? I don't even know.

So we finally found the pots and pans aisle and we stood there looking for single pots. But they only had these mega packs of twelve pots in different sizes. Apparently, you're supposed to use a different sized pot for different things. I use the same pot for everything. I'm such a philistine. Mikey keeps sighing at their old pots and pans and maybe I should get this set for him.

Raph whimpering out loud at the lack of selection. He was going, "What… eh?... huh?..." in this high-pitched voice. It was even funnier because I couldn't see his expression. "What are we supposed to do? I don't want all these pots. I just want one. Hey, you!" He bellowed down the aisle at a worker. He was a little older than Raph and he wandered down the aisle to us. Raph read his nametag, I guess, because he said, "Peter, I need one pot."

Peter said, "We only have those."

"Yeah, I see that. I just want one. So I'm going to take one out of the box and give you what I think it's worth."

I remember thinking, AARRRGH!

"You can't do that. It's a set." Peter was holding a pricing gun, like he thought he could defend himself with it. That poor guy.

Raph got really close to the box and read the contents to himself and looked at the price and then mumbled a little and said, "I figure that the one I want has to be worth $19.95." I'm so impressed by that.

"I can't let you do that. You have to buy the whole box."

Raph made this funny noise in his throat. It was his frustrated sound.

Then Peter looks really mad and goes, "Did you just growl at me, sir?"

"No, he didn't," I said. I thought maybe I should smooth this over before it came to blows. "He has asthma. It was a cough. So we'll just go to Target and take our business there. Come on. Oh, put the box down."

He'd picked up the box and actually started opening it while I was talking. Determined to stick it to Peter the Wal-Mart Associate. So I grabbed him by the arm and tried to march him off, but I just kind of leaned off into space. And he was cutting that thing open with his sai and Peter sees it and goes, "We don't allow weapons in the store."

Raph put it back and started down the aisle and I tripped a few steps because I was still hanging on to him. He was saying, "That prick. Just another Leo. Hey, I want to buy a book." I almost fell over in shock.

"A book?"

"Yeah, did you think I can't read?" Following Raph around is pretty tiring because he walks really fast and doesn't wait for you to keep up and he's always going down an aisle and doubling back and stuff. So I was kind of winded by the time we got to the books.

He bought "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter." I made a face at the cover and he said, "Don't worry. I'll read some Raymond Carver later to make up for it. I don't want my brain to turn to mush."

Raph reading Raymond Carver. Hmmm. I had to read him college. I think the story was about a guy who gets high with a blind man and helps him draw pictures. I didn't get it.

Then he said something and I had no idea how to respond. He saw a copy of Maxim and made like he was about to pick it up and said, "I should get Leo a subscription for Christmas or the Kama Sutra."

Uh… yeah… I couldn't see if he was smiling under the mask. I sure hope he was joking. He'd better be. I hope he doesn't tell Mikey that he thought about buying Leo the Kama Sutra because he would order it online, wrap it and put it under the Christmas tree for the family unwrapping. And then video tape the event.

So he bought his stupid book about Abe Lincoln killing vampires and we went down the road to Target. He's afraid of greeters of something because this man said hello to him and I could see his eyes going kind of buggy and didn't say anything. Guess he finds it creepy or suspicious for some reason. He said we should shop at Target because they have the right colors. Because the store colors are red and Wal-Mart's colors are "bad" because they're blue. He's so silly sometimes.

They were playing the weirdest thing on the radio. He was standing under a speaker in the ceiling, listening to the music with his head tilted up and I thought he was having a seizure for second and then he said, "Is that 'Smells Like Teen Spirit?'" I listened to. I noticed that two other people were doing the same thing. It was a symphonic version of Nirvana. Not elevator music, but a strings rendition. He said, "That's so cool. I'm going to look that up when we get home."

I wanted to buy something electronic for Don. He's so much my baby and I spoil him badly sometimes. I bought him a little vacuum to soup up. Not many sixteen year old boys get a vacuum and go, "Oh, thanks!"

Then we found the pots and it was the opposite of the Wal-Mart situation. There were two aisles of pots and pans. Raph was totally overwhelmed with decision. He's never really shopped before. He was like, "What… aluminum… Teflon… I just want a fucking iron pot. They all have lids. We don't need a lid. And we have to pay extra for it. Why are they all so small? I don't want a big pasta pot with all these tongs and things in the box. And that's a big pan. Argh!"

So I picked something that was on sale and said, "This had better be the coolest pot I've ever used."

Then we took our pot up front and picked up a recipe magazine for Mikey and then went back in the store and got the ingredients for one of the recipes because otherwise he said he would just make mac and cheese and I wanted something else.

We got back in line with a full cart of groceries and a vacuum cleaner and he picked up, or tried to, I had to pick it up for him, a Soap Opera Digest and was reading stuff out loud and going, "Luke Spencer should just nuke Spoon Island and get rid of all the Cassadines. Leo would live there if he could. Too bad Emily died. Oh, I hate that bitch Brenda. Carly too."

An old lady in front of us huffed at his language.

Then Don called me and I spent about five minutes on the phone going, "No, you are… No, you are… No, you are…" I don't even remember what he was saying now.

I hung up and heard the old lady saying to Raph, "The Cassadines came to the show in the 80's when they built the weather machine and Luke, Laura and Robert Scorpio stopped it."

"How did Laura end up having a kid with one of the Cassadines?" he asked as he flipped around through the book. "Is he Stefan's or Stavros'? Seems like they went back and forth on that and I don't remember what happened."

"I think they went back to Stavros," the old lady said. She had a crib mattress in her cart and she was balancing it on top with her free hand.

Raph said, "Mikey watches One Life to Live. They're always having these people go ape shit crazy out of nowhere and kill people though. Gets on my nerves. And how many times can you build a glass apartment under the same house without people catching on?"

Then they blathered about the Lords and Buchanans and Kramers for a while. They're all such old ladies. Ninja fighting old ladies, I guess.

Well, after a while, the old lady was about to leave and she said to one of the boss people as they passed, "Could you help me carry out this crib mattress."

And the boss said, "Can't you do it yourself?" Really mean. Like it was totally unreasonable for an old woman not to be able to carry a mattress single-handedly.

Raph went for his sais. I was ready smack him one. But that's his instinct. Old lady in distress. Reach for weapons.

The cashier made some remark that it was the boss' job to do that and I thought, "Good on you, cashier."

And the boss huffed and said, "I don't have time for this." Then she just walked off.

Raph said, "If you wait, I'll carry it."

So the lady thanked him a lot and he carried her mattress to her car. I made a lot of, "Oh, that was so cute!" statements and he growled a lot and told me shut up.

When I first met them, I used to think it was so strange how Raph would growl inarticulately and then Mikey would go, "Yup. Raph said we should do it," or something like that. After a while you learn the subtle intonations.

We tried to make this fancy potato stew and we kind of messed it up. It didn't look the same as the picture, but it was good anyway. Don came over just now and said that we probably made it right because they doctor food in pictures with glue and foreign substances to make them look better. His lie made us feel slightly more competent.

He was so happy to get his little vacuum. He instantly tore it open and pulled the motor apart. Humming and happy. Happy little turtle boy.


	71. Chapter 71

_Figured I'd update something else besides my romance until the Mary Sue plague has ended. I realized that school let out and so teen girls stumbling upon the sewers and mpreg will be huge for three weeks or something. I wrote this a while back for the April's Diary audio plays and I never posted it. I'll probably shuffle this back before the climax chapters when I'm done._

Dear Diary,

Don's really psyched up for this stupid science fiction convention. Mikey is too. They asked Leo and Raph if they wanted to go, but they're too cool. Raph said he'd rather get his testicles caught in a wood chipper. Which is pretty impressive since they're way up in his shell. Leo just glared and said he had better things to do on a Saturday night. Like nothing at all.

Mikey said to me, "So you're dressing up, right? Don's got the costume all picked out and everything."

"What costume?"

Don was swinging his bo in the air like a marching band majorette and he stumbled and dropped it and said, "Well, it was just an idea."

"Just an idea?" Mikey said. "You have the Slave Leia costume priced and sized and everything. But I can see why you wouldn't want to dress up as her, April. You wouldn't look right. Your arms and boobs are too freckled."

I'm getting the idea that Don has some kind of kinky fantasy about Princess Leia. That's something I could have gone forever without knowing.

Dear Diary,

When we got to the convention Mikey said, "Nerds in their natural habitat."

And Don and Mikey blended right in. Partly because of the nerd factor, but because half the people there were wearing these elaborate costumes. I saw at least three other people walking around looking like giant turtles and they had suits so well made that Don and Mikey didn't stand out at all. I wonder what show they were there for. I don't recall any TV show with giant turtles.

Anyway, Mikey of course vanished right away and Don gathered a clique of uber-geeks around him. He drew them like moths to a really nerdy flame. I didn't have much to do. I mean, I don't read comic books or anything.

I listened to Don mostly. He was like the Homer of science fiction. They all just stood around him listening as he spouted wisdom.

"…They always make like there are only two slayers, Buffy and Faith."

Some random fan dressed like a storm trooper had to interrupt and say, "What do you mean, there's only two slayers? What about Kendra? There were three before Season 8."

"No, Faith was called because Kendra died. So there were only two slayers at one time until Willow called all the potentials in the series finale. But that doesn't make any sense. Because one slayer's called when one dies. But Buffy's technically died three times. So by the time of the final battle in Sunnydale there should have been four slayers."

Random storm trooper said, "Yeah, but there was something about the third slayer in one of the novelizations."

"That isn't canon." He said it like the guy had a mental deficiency. "The only canon material is written by Joss Whedon, so that only includes the TV series and the season 8 comics. I heard they're planning on a series 9. I can't see what they'll do now that Giles is dead and Willow's lost her powers, but knowing that show they get more screen time after they die. I mean, Warren died way back in season 6 and he was still kicking around in season 8."

So the Buffy geek-fest went on for a while and I wandered off looking for Mikey. He was sitting on this chair that looked like it had been salvaged from Area 51. He looked like a king on a throne, surrounded by his alien concubines.

He said, "Okay, now I have room for two ladies on my lap. But don't worry. I have enough stamina for you all of you."

Good thing that one doesn't get out in public much. And I don't mean because he's a ninja who lives in secrecy. For the safety of woman kind, it is a blessing that he's kept close to home. Most of the time anyway. I think this will become an impossible challenge for his brothers in the next year or so.

Then he pulled out his phone and dialed and went, "Guess what, Raphie? I have a bunch of T'wilek slave girls sitting on my lap. What are you doing? Looking at tits on the computer? Well, I'm looking at the real thing." He paused and looked kind of sour and said, "Yeah… well… fuck you too! I mean. Nope. You're not getting fucked any time soon. Me on the other hand. I might bring home a few of these T'wilek slave girls."

I wonder if this is like some kind of crazy pick up scene for nerds where they get all dressed up and take somebody home with them. There was a girl walking around dressed like Boba Fett with her midriff and cleavage hanging out. I think if she was in a real laser gun battle she'd be fried pretty fast.

I found Don again and now he was talking about some new geeky nonsense.

"Well in the Back to Earth series, Rimmer is a hologram again, even though at the end of season 8 he's alive. But Ace Rimmer is a hologram, so either he came back and switched with the new Rimmer, which I seriously doubt, or else the old Rimmer died at some point after the end of the series."

Random storm trooper said, "He did die remember? Death came to get him."

"He did not die!" He was all huffy and stomping his big ninja foot. "Death came for him and Rimmer kneed him in the crotch and ran away. So he might have escaped him. But that doesn't explain how the rest of the crew got back from that other universe. And Back to Earth was set as series 10. So there was a lost series where either the rest of the crew comes back from that mirror dimension or else Rimmer crossed over and joins them in the mirror dimension or else the nanobots built them over again. They're going to make a series 9, so I'm eager to see what really happened. As long as they don't screw it all up like they did at the end of series 6 and edit out the fact that Rimmer really saved them all and made it sound like it was an accident. How did…"

I left him to argue with the fans and perused the tables. I don't know much about this stuff and I was the only girl who wasn't wearing a slutty costume, so I felt pretty out of place.

I heard Mikey's voice like a giddy foghorn reverberating all over the conference hall saying, "I'm a total pimp, Raph. I have a stable full of bitches and you can't have any of my hoes. A pimp is a great man, full of benevolence and generosity. He keeps girls in money. You know, I bet this is what Don's wet dreams are like. Slave Leias as far as the eye can see. A whole skanky herd of them."

Then I made my presence known and Mikey the Baby Faced Pimp instantly went all sugar and sweetness and goes, "April, I was looking for you. Want to help me find the Sisters of the Undead booth? I heard that the creators are here."

So we wandered over to see the two geniuses behind Mikey's favorite comic where these zombie chicks with cleavage like a mountain side run around and chop off mobsters' heads. We found the booth and Mikey cuts past about fifty patiently waiting people and goes, "Hey, I read all of the issues and I wanted to tell you that you're both really good writers and creative and stuff but I have a big problem with this thing where Veronica finds out that she's adopted. I mean, come on. If she can only get powers from being related by blood how is she going to keep on fighting in the Postmortem Club? You're going to have to do some major back pedaling to make that work. Do you just want to ditch her character? I can see why. I mean, she does nothing but mope around because Chad left her. And why? He was nothing but a big leech. He kept mind-fucking her and that messed up her powers and no wonder nobody can stand to be around her. So why don't you just fix her and get her over stupid Chad instead of ditching her. It's bad to get rid of one of the core characters. It screws up the whole mojo. But I think you're doing really great and other than, good job. I loved it when Violet went back in time and talked to their mother. That made me bawl like a baby. It was great to meet you guys. I thought Rush Limbaugh was way out of line to say you're left wing puppets of communist ideals. So, bye."

And he walked off to rejoin his bitches, leaving the creators totally baffled as if they didn't know what had just hit them. And he said it all in one breath.

Mikey went around the showroom floor criticizing his idols and offering them creative advice. He said to one guy, "I'm a writer too and I'm going to write a novel someday and it'll be really popular once it's published, I'm sure. But I draw too and I can't decide if I should do a comic or a book because they're pretty different, you know. I want to write about a girl who's going to nursing school and has to reconnect with three of her aunts who she's never met, but that might look kind of weird as a comic book."

And it didn't help him look any more inconspicuous when he had five girls dressed up in those Princess Leia bikinis following him around and he stood there like Hugh Heffner with an arm around two at a time. And he kept stopping all over the place to give nunchuck demonstrations to people.

Finally, I got fed up with it and told him I was going to leave them both there if they didn't come on. Mikey said, "Go ahead. We'll take the sewers back." He had a girl hanging on to on to his belt and I was getting really pissed off. Girls shouldn't touch him. Maybe I'm becoming kind of maternal, but seeing girls feeling on him and flirting with him makes me puke a little in my mouth. I said, "If you don't come right now, I'm going to send that picture of you groping Wonder Woman to Splinter."

He gave me big blue puppy eyes and I ordered him along. It doesn't work anymore. I don't know why he still tries it.

Don was screaming at Spiderman in Klingon or Sindarin and I ordered him to come with me. He obeys me most of the time and walked off in mid-sentence.

And something deeply unsettling happened as I was heading out the door after I dumped my little nerds back at the lair. Leo was cutting Raph's toenails for some reason, but that wasn't it.

As I headed out the door I heard Don mumbling to Mikey, "So did you get any pictures of those Slave Leias that I can have?"

EW!


	72. Chapter 72

_So I've decided to scrap my supposedly epic ending to April's Diary. As soon as I put an outline and structure to it, then it instantly was no fun and I decided to just toss it into canon drabbles, which is becoming sort of a garbage bin for stuff I don't like any more. Alex Hamato commanded me to give her credit for this idea. So I do under duress even though it totally was her idea. The bit with Mikey was Alex Hamato carrying my cat around as I wrote thing, singing those exact lines to the poor animal._

Dear Diary,

I just made a dating profile on an internet dating site. I said a few things to a few guys and tried to sound super interesting, but I can't talk about any really interesting stuff I do so I sounded like, "Hey, there. I'm really interesting. You sound really boring. Call me! I'm desperate!"

I went to the lair and they were all sitting around watching this show about women buying wedding dresses. Raph must have been asleep before they changed the channel or he would have had a tantrum and left the room. Mikey said, "I think that lady needs to go back to elementary school. She keeps saying her mother will pay $10,000 and she only has $3,000."

Leo said, "Why would you spend that much on a wedding dress? You only wear it once. Unless you're Elizabeth Taylor. Wasn't she married ten times?"

Don was doing something with a piece of machinery in his hands and it kept lighting up the dark room with sparks and he said, "I think you get a new dress when you get remarried so you can fool yourself into thinking it's the first time or something."

I said I planned to get married in the Virgin Islands on a mountain top in a bikini and they all got awkward. I don't know if it's the idea of me getting married or the idea of me in a bikini or the idea of mountains. Who knows. I don't think it's the bikini because they all see me in my underwear anyway. The perverts. That's the trouble with ninjas. There's no privacy.

Later that night I made Don work on my van. He didn't really want to because he was too busy watching a show on his laptop show and wouldn't tell me what it was so I assume it was something skanky. He said there was an octopus involved and I asked if it was Nova or Animal Planet and he got weird. How can porn involve an octopus? Anyway, I made him change my oil filter and he goes, "You know while I'm at it, I'll just put a big [insert technical term I didn't understand] here on the top."

I told him that if he ever adds something to my vehicle that I will bitch slap his green ass up and down the street. He went all sad and bug eyed and I had to pretend I had cramps to get out of being so cranky. I feel so lousy! I don't know what came over me! It couldn't be that you're an annoying teenager who won't quit tearing my car to pieces. Must be my ovaries on the fritz again.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don didn't like it that I said he couldn't play with my van so he bought his own. He got it for $200 on eBay and Raph drove him on the motorcycle all the way to New Jersey and they met this guy who Raph described as that Train Man from the last Matrix movie only if he were dirtier and on crack. Then he spent a few weeks doing weird crap to it. Guess it's better than him locking himself up with that tentacle rape porn. Yeah, Mikey explained that to me…

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don and Raph are working on this stupid van and don't have any time to come over here and watch The Avengers. I shouldn't be jealous of a van. I went down there to see if I could spend time with my Don and pretend I was down there to ask for help or something. I hate looking needy, but I get withdrawals if I don't see them enough. And I haven't not seen Raph enough to get that way. For a loner, he's around my place an awful lot. I miss Leo sometimes and then he comes over and after five minutes I'm thinking, "Okay, you can go home now, Mr. Responsibility." I don't know if I ever miss Mikey. I think of stuff to tell him sometimes. Or not to do mostly. But out of love obviously.

Raph was going, "You can't put that big ass thing on top! How can it… you can't go over forty with that shit on top! I would draft behind semi trucks in this and we'll be as big as a semi with that thing. And what's with the pipes on the front? What are those for?"

"All in good time. All in good time. My plans are not fully realized." Then he cackled maniacally and rubbed his hands together. I fully expected him to go, "I am an evil genius! Mwuahahaha!"

"Dumbass! Cut that out!" Raph hates it when he does that. "You think you're so smart! How smart will you be when I tear them off? HUH?!" With a loud HUH?! at the end like he leered at him full of aggression. I was hiding around the corner and wasn't looking, but I've seen him do it enough to visualize it in my mind's eye.

"I'll set up a laser grid with lots of bells and loud stuff that will scare you away, since you're a big dumb ape. That's how you scare big angry animals." Ouch. I can't believe he said that.

There was a loud bang and something smashed and Raph went stomping down the tunnel. He saw me and stumbled a second. Don hummed as soon as Raph left. I guess he said it to make sure he left and didn't come back so he wouldn't keep getting in the way.

I nearly told Raph to toughen up and that he knows Don just says stuff to get on his nerves so he can get his way because he's sixteen and not terribly mature and then I realized the irony of that statement. Raph's the biggest one of them and is pretty scary in the dark. Not that he's bad looking. He's just BIG and has a bunch of scars and you know this guy has taken some hard hits. He'll be terrifying as an adult. But he was pouting and I all I see is a big green child, pouting his beaky lips and sighing and huffing.

I told him to come over and watch The Avengers and he mindlessly did it, sighing and huffing the whole time.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Holy shit! Holiness of shit! Don built a freaking tank! It's a van with a big armored turtle shell on top and huge guns on the front. I asked where he got the guns and he said he just nabbed them from a military base. Just skipped in there with his van and stole some missiles. But don't worry, he assured, he learned how to make new ones with some junk he'd found at a fertilizer factory so he'd never run out.

Then there was this long debate on whether or not they should have an armored tank with bazookas. Don christened it the Battle Shell. "Because it has a shell." He was so proud of that.

"What are you going to do with it? Go storm chasing? I don't think Splinter will let you leave the lair for that long." Raph actually said that. Like he's too naïve to think his little brother would take the thing into battle and blow shit up. He must be chasing tornados with it.

"A shell?" Leo asked. He scratched his head and wrinkled up his face like it was taking a lot of thought. "A giant shell? Where did you get it?"

"I made it. How do you think?"

Leo said, "Won't it look kind of stupid? Does it sound like the ocean?"

Even I was confused by that.

Turns out he thought it was a giant conch shell like the ones you find on the beach and put to your head. He said, "I didn't think you'd actually do something as corn ball as put a huge turtle shell on top of it. What kind of guns?"

Then Don gave a long speech about the kinds of guns on the front of the van and Leo listened and Raph started yelling that Sensei would never go for this. Sometimes Raph wants to be a good boy. And if he's determined to be a good boy and the others are going to get him in trouble, then he yells and whines a lot. I think he feels like he screws up a lot and wants credit for when he's actually good.

"Why do we need a truck with guns? We're ninjas? Doesn't sound terribly stealthy." Leo correctly assumed that his brothers would go thundering around the city blowing holes in things.

Mikey seemed to have no real opinion but GUNS COOL WE BLOW SHIT UP WITH NEW TANK WOOHOO! Only he used lots more words and didn't sound so much like a cave man and kept jumping around and stuff. I honestly thought he might wet himself.

So this turned out to be Leo and Raph against Don and Mike and that's not usually the case. I got tired of it and as I left I heard Raph yelling, "WE'RE NINJAS AND WE DON'T NEED A VAN WITH GUNS! WE HAVE STEALTH! WHAT WAS ALL THAT TRAINING FOR IF WE DON'T NEED IT!" He was taking this weirdly hard.

Leo said in a "there there" kind of voice, "Relax. Sensei will tell him no."

"I spent all that time working on that van to make an effective weapon and you guys are too big of pussies to use it! This thing could really help against Hun or other big things. Triceratons and… those creepy Karai sex bots that Chaplin made… although I think Leo actually liked that…"

Mikey followed me out of the lair and asked to spend the night until the war passed because he honestly didn't care either way what happened. Leo was using his lecture voice and Raph was yelling. I think Don's pushed him to his limit. That's what you do to make Raph really mad. Give him an image of Leo being romantic with Karai or any female. I think it instantly triggers his psychotic button.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I feel kind of stupid. Well, really stupid. My van broke down again. I think it has some kind of problem with… the whole thing is a problem, okay. I took it to Don, who poked around and yanked stuff out from under the hood and said he would get it done as soon as he could figure out what he needed to recreate the rocket fuel in his van missiles.

Don let me borrow his Battle Shell and explained all the buttons I SHOULDN'T push unless I wanted to level the city. So I tried to drive this thing out of the sewers and onto the streets. I thought my van had a bad turning radius and blind spots. This thing has mirrors rigged up everywhere because it literally has no windows. I nearly broke my neck trying lean out the window to see behind me. And I had to fill up twice just to go down town. I remember Raph screaming about that and thought he must be exaggerating. "All this weight will drive the gas mileage down! What do you expect to use?! Your own piss?"

I went to the mall and bought nothing. I just walked around strutting in a really cute top I bought a while back. I hadn't worn it yet and wanted to be admired.

I never pay attention to where I park and I went to level 1A. I thought I parked near the ground level. But I couldn't find the van. So I went to level 3C because I thought that's where I parked last time I was there and the colors were both kind of reddish and I'm slightly color blind and I thought I could have mixed it up. No luck.

And I had to do something that I think embarrasses most human women. I had to call Don and tell him that I lost the car in the parking ramp. He said, "How could you lose a big tank with a shell on top and guns on the front? It looks like a big yellow garbage truck." Don huffed like he was mad and said kind of in the background, "Here you talk to her."

The phone shuffled around and Mikey came on and said, "Hey, you know how Raph has such a big freaking shell and we always thought it was some kind of turtle sign that he's fat or needs to stop lifting weights so much, like his muscle tone makes his shell really big? We looked it up and it's like a turtle sign of virility. I guess that means he's got really potent sperm. Or does that mean he's really well hung? I've seen it and it's as big as mine… hey!..." Somebody ripped the phone away, thankfully.

"So did you find it yet?" Don asked.

"No! All these levels look the same." It's true. I always forget where I park. Every building and every lot looks the same to me.

Don said like it was so totally obvious, "Just call it."

I whistled like I was calling a dog and went, "Here, boy! Come on! Good van!" He's not the only one who's a smart ass.

"I put a locator on the key chain. Press that green button and it should come to you."

"What do you mean come to me? What if it's three floors above me?"

Mikey was singing in the background, "I got a kitty! I got a kitty and I'm never gonna let you go…!" kissy kissy noises. I guess he was molesting Klunk.

"Then it would missile blast its way through the concrete. Cool huh?!"

I stomped and my heel broke off. "Not cool! Never mind!" And I hung up on him.

After forty five minutes of hobbling up and down the ramp cursing the little green men in my life I found the stupid van and drove it all the way back to the lair and considered leaving it outside and then going into Don's lab and using the summoning button, watching as it tore through dozens of tunnels. But I'm not insane and just tossed him the keys and snubbed him.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Had an excruciating dinner with the boys. I feel so sorry for their dad sometimes. He sat at the head of the table and tried to blot out the comments. Mikey made these big sausages and I'm sure he did it on purpose because as they all sat at the table and Raph was talking happily to Leo and his dad about some kind of political thing I didn't care about and laughing and getting along then Mikey starts handing out hotdogs and he puts one on Don's plate and he says, "So does Raph need a big wiener? Or does he have one already?"

And Don tries not to choke and says, "No, I don't think he needs another one. Think of how terrifying that would be on his wedding night."

Leo looked a little annoyed and said, "Okaaay… He doesn't have his yet. Are you two getting senile?"

Poor Raph went all red and asked really politely to be excused. He doesn't always flip the table over. He's a good boy sometimes. I honestly think the kid was about to cry for a second. Leo noticed and said, "Alright I ban you two from talking for the rest of the meal."

And when Leo bans something, they listen. Splinter manfully pretended he didn't notice or understand, although I'm sure he did. I don't think he understood what the context of the joke was though.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Don just had a minor bitch attack at me because he went out on patrol and Mikey told them he saw a chupacabra, and they got all kitted up to capture it but it turned out to be a cat with mange.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo is such a windbag. I picture him in congress or the head of a university giving speeches nobody listens to. He came over and Mikey asked Raph if he needed help schlepping his huge dong when he made his way to the bathroom and Raph practically ran and hid, locking the door behind him.

But that wasn't a smart maneuver for privacy because Leo was on the john when he did it and I heard him go, "A little privacy please?" And he didn't get it because Raph stayed and Leo left after a few minutes. And Raph locked the door after him. Then Leo put his hands on his hips and gave this speech that bowed them under his wrath and power and they were both weeping by the end of it and declaring themselves to be the worst beings in creation. The kid has a gift. Half of it was Japanese and Raph kept cutting in with a muffled voice from the bathroom to concur in said language. I just put on my iPod and pulled out my headphones every few minutes to see if it was over yet.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Got another bitch attack call. Raph spotted zombies, but they turned out to be drunk girls coming home from a night club.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Leo and Raph cased the neighborhood for that crazy guy who plays the flute and has all the pet rats. They parked the Battle Shell someplace and Leo didn't remember where he put it, so he pushed the green button thinking it would beep and it came hurtling towards them and crashed through an H&M and a gas station. It landed on top of a fire hydrant and made a thirty foot geyser in the air. So much for stealth.


	73. Chapter 73

_Just a short little episode. I might carry on with Don's adventures. I guess that's a joke on myself because people always say it's like my Don isn't even there._

Dear Diary,

I went down to the lair to pretend to borrow something. I do that sometimes so it doesn't look like I have nothing better going on. I said I needed bacon and Raph crossed his arms and asked why. Raph's possessive of the bacon I guess.

Mikey was sitting at the coffee table surrounded by crumpled paper and empty Monster cans with his tongue sticking out. I asked if he had been in some kind of accident that made his face stick that way. Raph went back to the kitchen to protect the bacon.

Mikey and Leo are trying to write a comic book. Seems Leo has all these brilliant ninja epic comic book ideas about honor and stuff like that. But he can't draw so Mikey volunteered to do it for him. Leo wrote the whole script and now Mikey is illustrating it. I tried to look at it, but his blood shot eyes bugged out and he put his hands over the pages before I could look. It was kind of like when Gene Wilder snatched that chess piece in Blazing Saddles. He did it so fast that the paper disappeared and I didn't notice that he had it in his arms against his chest until a second after the fact. There was some kind of loud male bitching in the kitchen at that moment too, so I'm going to blame it on that and say it wasn't because I'm getting old and slow.

"You can't see it until it's finished! You'll ruin my creative energy! I shouldn't even be talking to you now! You should leave before your estrogen pollutes the air and I start crying!"

I asked, "How many of these Monsters have you had? You're not supposed to have more than three." I picked up a can and read the caffeine seizure warning stuff on the side.

He glanced back and forth, in kind of a weird zigzag pattern. "Enough... I'm going to my room."

I thought I should lecture Leo for letting his brother drink nine Monsters in one night and glanced around. Raph was sitting at the kitchen table, pouting like a big baby and yelled suddenly, "Where's the cat?!"

I'm sure it made sense, but things are always funnier out of context. But he looked rather moody, so I didn't want to laugh at him openly. I mocked inwardly.

Leo was in the dojo, staring at the wall. Meditating, I guess. Or taking a nap. It's hard to tell sometimes. I flicked him on the side of the head and he started, making a little eep sound.

"That was really manly, what you did just now."

He ignored it, like he usually ignores teasing and pulled himself up like the Ambassador-of-Somewhere-Really-Important and said, "I was meditating. What do you want?" Then he looked all soppy eyed and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. I almost fell asleep."

"Why is your brother overdosing on caffeine? You know how sensitive he is to it."

I could hear Mikey singing "Send in the Clowns" while the toilet flushed and Raph walked by the dojo going, "Here, kitty kitty. Come here, boy. Mangy ball of puke!" I don't know who did the flushing or if they were both in the john at the same time. Either one could be the case with them.

Leo said, "He's been illustrating a story I wrote and he said he couldn't be disturbed once he got going and that it would ruin the artistic integrity of the piece if he lost concentration. I consider it a form of meditation for a higher purpose. Some monks used hallucinogenics and drugs to enter a frame of mind more suitable for..."

Then I cut him off and yelled at him for suggesting that he drug his brother in the name of art and told him I'd smack him if I found out he did drugs to meditate. He looked really scared. It's a heady experience knowing you frighten a frightening ninja.

* * *

Dear Diary,

Two issues today. Splinter found Mikey's completed comic book draft, thought it was porn and threw it in the fireplace. Raph sat on the couch with his pouty face on, petting the cat and he pet it so hard that it pulled its fur back so that the top of his eyeballs popped out. I told him to cut it out and he tossed the cat on the floor, who rubbed on his leg, purring. I guess I don't know cats very well. Raph kicked him away. That's the way it goes with Raph. He'll love you when you want to escape, but as soon as you ask for it, he kicks you to the curb. I'm sure he'll make a great husband some day... Good thing he isn't human.

Anyway, Mikey had a scanned copy made in case somebody from IDW (whatever that is) broke in and tried to steal his masterpiece and pass it off as their own. Leo took a look at it and blanched. Well, he turned kind of pea green instead of emerald green. The women in the story had huge boobs. Everything was stretched out of proportion and exaggerated like a nightmare. When somebody got stabbed, blood covered the whole frame and in some cases, dripped into the other frames around it.

"What is the meaning of this? You've perverted my intent!" Leo said, shaking the pages at him for emphasis as dramatically as Scarlet O'Hara.

Mikey rubbed his bleary eyes and yawned and said, "I don't remember most of what I did. Whoa! That chick has huge boobs! Leo! I didn't think you would draw stuff like this. April, you should cover your eyes!"

"I didn't do it! You did!" Leo threw it to the floor and poor Splinter stood there, wringing his whiskers.

"My sons. I apologize for hastily destroying the artistic work you spent so long on. But I must say to both of you, that the time should be spent on more industrious and worthwhile pursuits. Leonardo, how much time practicing in the dojo did you miss because of this? And Michelangelo... you didn't pass out did you...?" I almost laughed. When it comes down to it, a waste of Mikey's time equals passing out.

Mikey shook his head and it looked like it would wobble off his neck. "No, dad! I slept like a baby for a whole nineteen hours. No harm done!"

So once the secret was out in the open, we all sat down to dinner in front of the television so Sensei could watch Jersey Shore and we ate dinner. All except Don.

"Where's Don?" I asked.

Leo shrugged. "Lab I guess."

Mikey snored with his head cocked to the side, drooling.

Raph said, "Weren't you guys just in there using the scanner?"

I looked around, like Don was a pet hiding under the furniture. "Did he go out?"

"I haven't seen him in like... five days, man..." Raph said, his eyes dodging around like he thought we might yell at him.

So that ended the night. Panic because we realized we hadn't noticed that Don had been missing for five days.


	74. Chapter 74

_So thank you to AlexHamato and Aster Sapphire for the idea storming here. I've just been doing nothing in the writing department for about a year now. I think you should all go send messages to AlexHamato mocking her on her depth of knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons._

_Also, if you try to leave a review and can't, it's because I took down a bunch of chapters I didn't like. So leave it anonymously if you would like._

_I'm anticipating that I'll get comments like they wouldn't fall for it, but I don't really care what you think. So don't bother telling me. It's funny and that is all that matters._

Dear Diary,

After a million years of people standing around trying to remember the last time they had seen Don and trying to make it sound like they weren't the last one to see him, finally Mikey said, "Last time I went in there it was by accident because I would, like, never go in there on purpose and I swear there were mushrooms growing on things. Like the the Steve Urkel pinball machine."

So we quested to the lab to check and see if he was hiding under the bed I guess and Raph starts heaving junk around. I think we both shared the same irrational fear that his junk fell on top of him. Raph tried to move the pinball machine, which squeaked, "Got any cheese?" and Mikey came vaulting through the room like an Olympic gymnast and did some kind of splits over his head and Raph screamed, "Keep your junk out of my face!" Something popped off the end of the pinball machine as a he moved it.

Leo looked around the room and looked like he was ready to prostrate himself on the floor in grief. "I'm the leader and it is my responsibility to make sure that we're all accounted for and performing well. I did think it was strange that we kept coming up odd when sparring last week..."

"I found the fungus! Somebody get me some soap. I'm going to nuke this sucker!" Mikey said. "I don't want to get black lung disease!" Mikey has had some kind of weird panic about dying from mold or fungus since this whole episode started. I think it's displacement.

I yelled like a lunatic, "What if he's out selling those mushrooms?! He's not involved with the Russian mafia is he?!" Which isn't as a weird a concern with them as it sounds.

Raph picked up his motorcycle helmet and said, "This is fucking stupid! I'm going out to look for him! You guys can stay here and talk or you can help!"

Mikey sat down at the computer and said, "We can look at his browsing history. Now what's his password?"

I could see poor Leo's eyes going from Mikey to Raph to Mikey to Raph. "Ugh... Raph, damn you!"

At exactly that moment, Sensei materialized in the doorway and Leo bowed so low he may as well have prostrated himself at his feet. "Sensei, I apologize profusely! I had no clue you were there! Not that I would have been disrespectful if you hadn't!"

Sensei just narrowed his eyes and banged his cane on the floor for silence. "Leonardo, you will follow Raphael. Michelangelo will assist April and myself as we check Donatello's computer."

Leo looked grateful for some coherent plans and headed after Raph. I could hear them bickering and yelling as they left down the sewer tunnel towards the surface or wherever they were going.

As soon as they were gone Mikey miraculously remembered seeing Don enter his password, which was [[dancing_paladin!2^o^]] and it was a miracle that it worked because Mikey reckoned that Don had used some crazy CIA encryption or firewall or something. The first thing we learned is that he seems to like that pornography where women get raped by eels and octopuses and stuff. And of course Splinter was standing right there while Mikey goes, "Oops. Not it. Oops. Sensei, this might take a while. I don't want to bore you."

Then we found a chat history that was in some kind of foreign language with two people called CrypyKeeper101 and BeiberDragonMan78.

"Dude, he totally spelled the Biebs' name wrong!" Mikey said as he skimmed the conversation. "I'm pretty sure it's in Portuguese. It looks like Spanish if it was all spelled like French." He pointed to a few examples that didn't look like French or Spanish or anything remotely Latinate to me. But I nodded. He scrolled around and then identified the key phrase where he said Don had disclosed his location. Sensei wandered away to have a cup of tea because either he didn't have faith in Mikey's Google skills or he thought we were taking too long. I think both might be the case.

Then Raph called on his phone and demanded that we either get down to my van or he and Leo would leave us behind. He sounded fairly hysterical and Leo could be heard saying, "Way to be a team player, Raph." But I didn't hear him stopping him to wait for us either.

"You don't have keys to my van! Just say there!"

"WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS BULLSHIT! GET DOWN HERE OR WE'RE LEAVING! WHATEVER! WE'RE GONE! TAKE A TAXI!"

Obviously, Raph is the only one I usually write yelling at me in capslock.

Mikey said, "I can't take a taxi!"

"Do you have any information for me?" Leo asked.

"Come over to chocolate hole so I can tickle your puppy wagon," Mikey said proudly as if it were a scientific formula.

"Excuse me?" I said, whacking him on the back of the head.

"I ran it through Google Translate. He's telling his conspirators where to go. Or else they ordered him to go there or else they would kill us all. I'm not sure what the subject of the sentence is. Him or them. Anyway. Go where they have chocolate holes full of puppies and you'll find him."

Raph hung up on us and then Leo instantly called back. "I apologize for Raph's rudeness. We've already left so you'll have to find another way to get there."

I guess no keys doesn't stop a determined ninja. Then I yelled at the heavens, "Stupid ninjas! That's my van!"

Mikey jumped up and flew out of the lair like a deer, leaving me behind with Sensei. I looked at him and grumbled. Then Raph called back and said, "I have a locator on my bike and I have an app to track it."

I asked who makes motorcycle tracking iPod apps and he didn't answer. "He's near that shitty mall where that guy crashed his go-cart in the middle of the street last year."

"Oh, the one with all the bad Chinese dress stores? Where they use Halloween material?"

"DO I LOOK LIKE FUCKING MARTHA STEWART? IT'S NEAR THE GLENN OAKS MALL! JUST GO THAT WAY!"

"Stop yelling at me!"

Then Sensei barked into the phone in Japanese and got a bunch of apologetic mumbling back in said language.

* * *

Dear Diary,

I took a taxi to that mall and then drove around for ten minutes looking for something although I had no clue what because they didn't tell me what house to go to. Then I found my van sitting outside an old duplex with a bunch of trash in the yard and an old car parked right on the lawn on cement blocks next to the front walk. I guessed ninjas were hiding on the roof or in the bushes, but they were standing out on the sidewalk in civilian clothes kind of arguing. Leo had his hands on his hips and Raph was pointing dramatically at nothing. I think Raph would make a good Shakespearean actor. He likes to yell and point and cry and stuff.

I don't know why they were standing around like that. Not very ninja like. Maybe Raph was about to break down the door. I watched as Leo thumped him on the chest and Raph took a step forward. Then Leo was all pat pat on the head. There there widdle Raph. Don't cry. And then Leo jumped up on the roof and looked kind of like if Columbo could scale walls like Spiderman. Which is kind of a troubling image. And Raph seemed to be about to go ninja around to the backyard when a huge dog jumped out of the car window and knocked him into the bushes on his back. He kicked it in the balls and it went yelping away.

A mangy woman came to the door and asked him what he was doing. She was wearing an old housecoat and brown slippers. Kind of round like the Pillsbury dough boy. His eyes were really big and then he looked really annoyed and seemed to be making up some hogwash. But he just shoved his way through the door. I went running to the door then, after I saw that Raph had just inserted himself into a room full of civilians and the door slammed in my face as soon as I got there. Leo was in there too now, somehow. I heard him say like Don Juan, "Ma'am, have you had any unexpected guests lately who are dressed similarly to us? I imagine you must have many admirers!"

Leo has some kind of mental disorder where he thinks it's the height of bad manners not to flirt with old women.

Raph yells from somewhere, "WHERE IS MY BROTHER!?"

I think he needs some kind of emotional therapy. He can't not randomly yell.

I knocked really hard on the door and saw there was a pot-bellied old man wearing a Green Bay Packers sweatshirt, shaking a fist at Leo. The old lady said something about a dildo and Leo was looking around for hidden dangers, brothers, ninjas, etc. and wasn't listening as the lady held onto his arm like a Southern Belle.

"If you paid more attention to me, Buck, then I wouldn't need to get my rocks off with other men! Who is this ginger at the door? Some woman you've been seeing behind my back! Well I have more junk in my trunk that a Cadillac!"

I opened the door and told the lady to get her old meat hooks off my brother and Raph went lumbering down to the basement because I think he heard voices. Leo professionally followed him, having no idea that he had just broken up a marriage.

The basement smelled like a smoky Thanksgiving turkey that had baked too long and like gym socks. Kind of like parties I went to when I was fifteen and there was crushed beer cans all over the room and big heaps of cigarettes. A few guys of varying ages stood around the room vacantly staring at us. Although all seemed to be either tall and thin or short and squat with no compromise in between, and all with acne and missing teeth. Another wore a pointy blue hat like Dumbledore and seemed to be carrying a big phone book under his arm. Another guy was wearing a white cloak with a garbage can lid on his chest and a football helmet over the hood. And yet another guy hovered in the corner in a black cloak with a bunch of white makeup on his face and a tattoo of a Winged Death's Head like you see in the really old cemeteries on his forehead that looked more like an owl. And there was a guy wearing leather pants and a furry vest like Kevin Sorbo, but with really skinny white arms with a tattoo of a My Little Pony doing something obscene on his arm.

Mikey was already down there. Points to Mikey. Points taken away from Mikey for casually standing there drinking one of the beers.

"How did you get down here?!" Raph demanded as he took the beer and threw it at the wall.

"I snuck down here staying completely hidden like a REAL ninja," Mikey said.

Fake Dumbledore had a bunch of herbs in his hand that seemed to be smoking and he was waving it around the room and chanting in some kind of foreign language. Raph grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him and demanded, "WHERE IS MY BROTHER?!"

The guy said to Raph, "All who walk in the twenty-foot zone of truth must take a will check. I mean, must focus on the spiritual energy of the sphere and bind their souls to it."

Raph shook him really hard and said, "Bind this, bitch!"

Gothic Guy yelled, "Protect me, Pelor!"

Meanwhile, Leo had Cloak Guy by the throat with one mighty hand and growled, "You had better know a chant to relieve pain." If I haven't heard him singing Lady Gaga in the shower I would be terrified of him.

Leather Wearing Guy looked at Fake Dumbledore, whose chanting had been squelched by the scary ninja shaking him and said, "Why'd you stop...GIRL!"

He shouted it like he'd just seen a monster and I looked around the room to see what he was talking about and realized he was staring at me slack-jawed. He seemed to be really torn about which was more shocking; Leo strangling his buddy or me.

Fake Dumbledore and said, "O, spare us, Pelor! Take mercy on us and the foolish souls who dare interrupt our ceremony of the undead! Please accept our offering of the Sun and embody your vessel with your light!"

Gothic Guy swept his robes around like a bullfighter and they got tangled around his ankles and he said to an empty Sunny Delight bottle on the table, "Please pass the light of the sun through this sphere and into the vessel. Blessed be the vessel!"

Raph said, "Stop doing this witchcraft and tell me where my brother is!"

Before I started hanging out with the green wonders I would have counted these basement dwellers as nerds in a basement, but I've since learned that nerds in a basement can be extremely dangerous. I've seen some crazy shaman do some weird stuff. It wasn't too far-fetched to imagine nerds in a basement screwing around with things they couldn't control and for Don to be mixed up in it.

Raph still had that one guy by the front of his robes and the guy thrust his open palm into Raph's chest, which must have felt like rock because he winced a little and then yelled, "Fus Roh Dah!" like he had just used the Jedi Force push. Raph glanced down at his chest for a second and then bitch slapped the guy across the face and he landed in a heap of blue robes at his feet.

The guy in the white robes wearing the football helmet said, "You can't shout unrelenting force with a silence spell in effect!" at the guy's prone body.

Leo pulled out a katana and released the guy with the one hand, switching it for a sword point with the other and said, "You had better have very good information on the location of my brother. What are you? A shaman of some kind?"

"Holy Dovakin!" Fake Dumbledore choked against the sword point in his throat.

Kevin Sorbo said, "Wrong! Dovakin is a Dragonborn trained to learn Thru'um and collect the souls of dragons. There is no reason you would ever pray to a Dovakin. You should know that, wizard!"

Fake Dumbledore blubbered, "I beseech you, lesser demon! Go back to the elemental plane!"

Leo said in his smooth scaring-bad-guys-with-the-dark-tambor-of-his-voice voice, "This is a bad time to invoke gods, friend. You release my brother or... well I don't want to scare you explaining..."

Kevin Sorbo gave a little shriek like he'd just seen a mouse.

The guy in the football helmet snorted and his garbage can lid clanged against his gut, "A level nine barbarian wouldn't cry like that."

I thought it was rather stupid of them to bait the armed ninjas. Raph pulled out a sai because he can never let Leo one-up him and said, "Anybody seen an ugly green turtle man?"

The Gothic Guy took a kind of grandiose position next to the empty Sunnydelight bottle and said, "I must be quick! The spell has been interrupted, but it is no matter! We must continue lest our souls be consumed by the fires of the sphere in the transfer! Oh, Pelor, here my plaintive cry of invocation…"

"Hey, cut that out!" Mikey said, grabbing the Sunnydelight bottle off the table. "No praying to the juice bottle until you tell us what you did with our brother!"

"We will do an exchange…" Gothic Guy said, rubbing his hands together as if he were an evil genius. "We will exchange your brother for the key that will transport Pelor to us directly. What was it again? Cleric, look it up!"

The guy in the white cloak said, "No, you have heard the words of the Dungeon Master! We are not to consult the tomes of wisdom or we will be chastised!"

Raph seemed to be fed up with all this and just straight off punched the Cleric in the nose, and I could hear a loud crack as bones in his face crumbled.

Leo was over this too. He dug the point in and said, "Tell me now! I'm through with this talk!"

"Hey, what's that smell?" Mikey sniffed the air like a blood hound and noticed a little puff of smoke coming from under a closet door. He opened it and there was Don sitting in a trance-like state wearing a white cloak with bits of rusty armor that looked he'd gotten it from the Lord of the Rings garage sale and a huge shield leaned against the wall that I think had been made from a car door with a spray painted sun on the front and his bo leaning against the wall next to it. I could smell cigarette smoking wafting out of there and a book on the floor called The Book of Vile Darkness.

I had this horrible feeling like he'd decided to talk to nice guys online and met them to hang out and then they tried to turn him into some kind of evil zombie warrior when they saw he was a mutant. It seems like that happened to Mike once, but I don't remember.

The Cleric bitch-slapped Gothic Guy saying, "No, it's toad's eyes. But you get an XP penalty for not having a high wisdom modifier."

Gothic Guy yelled, "Just do it! Kill some dire rats to make up for it!"

Raph said rather nonsensically, "Who drugged him!? I'll gut you! There's no fucking modifier for eating your own intestines!"

Then I saw Master Splinter in the middle of the room. He had just ninja appeared in the room out of thin air. He looked really angry. His whiskers flared as if in a fresh breeze. "Where is my son?"

All the nerds pointed to the closet. Except the ones who had been knocked out.

Mikey slapped Don on the cheeks and didn't get any recognition. He said, "Come back to us, bro! Please tell me you aren't this geeky!" It's nice to know his priorities are in the right place.

Don muttered in a monotone, "Donatello is no more. He is nothing but Pelor. Long live Pelor, the Sun knows all and now is in me."

Raph seemed to have the same idea that I had and was now ransacking the place for the drug stash.

I'd like to say I kept my cool here, but I flapped my arms like a bird and yelled, "Sensei, do something!"

Raph dropped Kevin Sorbo on his backside. I think he had been trying to shake drugs out of them all.

I hadn't noticed but Leo had the Gothic Guy with the owl on his forehead on the ground and was about to threaten to clip his head off like a twig. At least I think he was threatening. He put both his swords away and said, "Lucky break, friend."

Master Splinter went to the closet, shoved Mikey out of the way and just glowered down at Don.

Don mumbled, with a little catch in his voice like he was going hoarse, "The third eye must be returned on the eve of the second moon. Only then will the spirit be returned to the mortal shell."

Leo yelled like he was talking to a deaf person, "Don, are you still in there? It's Leonardo. You're brother."

The Cleric was still kind of complaining about some kind of spell and Leo said, "You are at the mercy of a family of ninjas! You may want to show some respect! My brother here has been known to kill just for the quiet that comes after."

Raph puffed up and looked kind of epic for a second. Yeah I'd be afraid of those guys.

The Gothic Guy said, "It's actually NINJA. The Japanese culture doesn't pluralize with "s" like we do. Duh."

Mikey gawked like "No, he just DIDN'T!"

Leo glared at the guy and said, "I'm an American and also a ninja carrying weapons of death and I really wants to kill you badly. Is now the proper time to give me a grammar lesson?"

Splinter said, "I will only say this one time, Donatello. You will stop this nonsense and come with us at once."

Don just instantly snapped out of it and said, "Yeah, yeah. Okay."

I stood there stunned for a while and realized I had totally been duped. I glanced around the room like my eyes had been closed the entire time, suddenly taking it all in with clarity. There were pictures of cartoon girls with huge boobs and huge eyes to match and kitty ears in their hair strewn on the table that they had been using to summon the god or whatever he was. I had seen a scary silhouette out of the corner of my eye and hadn't looked because I had half an idea that it was the god they had summoned. Then I noticed that it was a big green toad made out of a wire frame and hand painted. I don't know why I hadn't noticed but it was wearing a bathrobe and had a corncob pipe in its mouth. I'd been too busy wondering if Don's severed head was in one of the wooden chests against the wall. And then I realized I was not in the den of shaman; I was in the den of nerds.

I always thought of Don as my lovable innocent little nerd who would never lie or betray us. Raph scoffed loudly, obviously not believing his innocence as much as me. Leo seemed kind of wary like he thought it might be a trick or something. Mikey stamped his foot. "You made this all up! I hope your beloved Pelor smites you!"

Splinter didn't say anything but sat in front of him and stared. I would have requested to have a pen and piece of paper to write my will. He sighed and said, "I confess that I've been sneaking out and associating with humans. I will accept any punishment you find suitable."

"Are you insinuating that there would ever be a reason you would dare defy me?" Sensei asked, still glaring at him, on his knees at eye level.

Don blinked a few times and then stood up in the closet. "Of course not. I... have no reason... I mean..." He picked up the car door shield and fiddled with it nervously. I haven't seen many guys awkwardly fiddle with a big freaking car door. "Yeah I guess I would. And I tried. But I failed. So punish me and I won't do it again."

Splinter got off the ground and said wearily like he had raised one thousand troublesome sons and this one had finally defeated him, "You will be punished, surely. But whether or not you again disappoint me is another matter..."

I looked around for Leo and Raph's reactions to this and found that they had already ninja vanished. And the nerds were all standing around or else on the ground unconscious.

Don standing there wearing a white robe and rusty armor and a car door shield made him look really silly and the fact that I had been seriously concerned about his welfare seemed to really piss me off. I said, "What is wrong with you?! I told you to stop reading that tentacle rape stuff! And yet there it is all over your computer. Did you seriously think nobody else would find it? What if that was me?!"

He wrinkled up his face as if thinking really hard which is kind of scary when a scary smart person thinks hard. "I don't see why that's relevant since you would never do that. I've never seen you express sexual interest in cephalopods before. I don't look because I find it sexy or anything. I look up lots of things just to see what's out there. I figure they're consenting to it. You're not the kind of person who would take money to swim in a bathtub full of eels. You get a stipend from the college."

I think steam was about to come out of my ears. "What are you?! A freaking robot?! Who thinks like that?!"

They followed me to the van. Splinter just did something that will give me nightmares the rest of my life. I went out of the duplex and there was the happy couple. Mr. Happy Couple was on the phone with his lawyer and his wife was cutting up his underwear in the sink and shoving them down the garbage disposal and crying. I looked behind me and saw Splinter right there on the stairs and then Don with his head down following him, helm pulled down over his face. When I got out the front door SPLINTER WAS ALREADY IN THE VAN! And Don was sniffing behind me. I think I made him cry...

On the way back to the lair none of us talked. I think I wounded him badly with that robot comment. Well I'll feel bad about it tomorrow. He deserves it for now.


End file.
